When the estate attorney’s office called, I was in the middle of making oatmeal for my mother-in-law. The voice on the other end was polite and professional. "Is this Ms. Emma Davis? We need to verify some details regarding Mr. Robert Sterling’s will." "The will?" I froze for a second. My father-in-law’s will had been finalized through probate two years ago. The developer buyout money for his old property was left to my husband, Mark. After Mark passed away, that inheritance legally defaulted to me and our daughter. "Yes. The will was recently amended. You are no longer listed as a beneficiary." My hand, gripping the phone, stopped in mid-air. In the kitchen, the oatmeal bubbled and popped on the stove. From the living room, my mother-in-law yelled, "Is breakfast ready yet? I'm starving to death in here!" I didn't move. I was no longer the beneficiary. Then who was? Free Chapters 1 ######################### Data Divider ######################### Chapter 1 When the estate attorney’s office called, I was in the middle of making oatmeal for my mother-in-law. The voice on the other end was polite and professional. "Is this Ms. Emma Davis? We need to verify some details regarding Mr. Robert Sterling’s will." "The will?" I froze for a second. My father-in-law’s will had been finalized through probate two years ago. The developer buyout money for his old property was left to my husband, Mark. After Mark passed away, that inheritance legally defaulted to me and our daughter. "Yes. The will was recently amended. You are no longer listed as a beneficiary." My hand, gripping the phone, stopped in mid-air. In the kitchen, the oatmeal bubbled and popped on the stove. From the living room, my mother-in-law yelled, "Is breakfast ready yet? I'm starving to death in here!" I didn't move. I was no longer the beneficiary. Then who was? Mark passed away two years ago. A car crash. Rear-ended by a semi-truck on the interstate. The day the highway patrol called me, I was braiding my daughter’s hair. Lily was four years old at the time. She asked me, "Mommy, when is Daddy coming home?" I told her, soon. It was the cruelest lie I have ever told in my life. When Mark died, he left behind a house with a $350,000 mortgage, a four-year-old daughter, and a mother who needed constant care. My mother-in-law, Martha, was sixty-three. High blood pressure, bad knees. When Mark was alive, she lived in her own older house across town. Three days after Mark’s funeral, she showed up at my front door with two suitcases. "My son is gone. I'm living with you now." It wasn't a discussion. It was a notification. I didn't refuse. At the time, I thought: She just lost her only son. I can't turn her away. From that day on, my life turned into this: Wake up at 5:30 AM. Boil eggs and make oatmeal for Martha. Wake Lily up at 6:30 AM. Dress her, do her hair. Drop Lily off at preschool by 7:00 AM. Rush to work by 7:30 AM. During my lunch break, call Martha to ask if she ate and if she took her pills. Clock out at 5:30 PM. Rush to the grocery store. Pick up Lily by 6:00 PM. Get home by 6:30 PM. Cook dinner. Martha never cooked. "My knees are bad. I can't stand for that long." Martha never did laundry. "I don't know how to use these new fancy machines." Martha never cleaned the house. "My eyesight is going bad, I can't see the dust." After dinner, I would wash the dishes, mop the floors, help Lily with her learning exercises, and take Martha’s blood pressure. By 10:00 PM, Lily was asleep, and Martha was asleep. I would sit alone in the living room, open my phone, and calculate the budget. The mortgage was $1,800 a month. Lily’s preschool was $1,200 a month. Martha’s prescriptions were $300 a month. Utilities, water, and HOA fees were $400 a month. Groceries and household items were $800 a month. My take-home pay was $3,800 a month. $3,800 - $1,800 - $1,200 - $300 - $400 - $800 = -$700. Every single month, I was $700 in the red. Mark’s life insurance and the accident settlement came out to about $100,000. After paying $15,000 for the funeral, I had $85,000 left. Over the past two years, covering the monthly deficit and emergency expenses had drained almost $20,000. That $85,000 safety net had shrunk to $65,000. I had to borrow money from my coworkers three times. During my most desperate month, I only had $150 left in my checking account. A hundred and fifty bucks. To stretch until the end of the month. I never told anyone. Martha didn't know. All she knew was that meals were served on time, her medicine was always refilled, the heat was on in the winter, and the AC was blasting in the summer. She never once asked me: "Do you have enough money?" Not even once. The news of the developer buyout broke last year. My late father-in-law, Robert, had left behind an old property on the south side of town. It was a tiny, run-down lot that had been sitting empty for years. Early last year, the city announced a massive commercial redevelopment project covering that entire district. The day the compensation offers were mailed out, Martha actually initiated a conversation with me. "Robert’s old place is getting bought out." I hummed in response. "The developer is offering about 1.5 million dollars." 1.5 million dollars. My heart skipped a beat. If we got that money, the mortgage could be paid off. I wouldn't have to stress about Lily’s college fund. We could finally breathe. "You know what his dad's will said," Martha added. "It goes to Mark. Since Mark is gone, it goes to you and Lily." I nodded. When my father-in-law passed away five years ago, the will was drawn up by a registered estate attorney. Black and white. The property and its equity were to be inherited by his son, Mark Sterling. Upon Mark’s death, by law, that inheritance would pass down to me and Lily. I thought this was a done deal. Completely ironclad. But the buyout process dragged on. Appraisals, surveys, signing endless agreements—it took over six months. During those six months, I noticed a subtle shift in Martha's attitude. She started going out a lot. Before, she rarely left the house, complaining about her bad knees. Now, she was leaving two or three times a week, claiming she was "catching up with her church friends." One day, I got off work early and saw her standing by the community gate, talking on her phone. Her voice was hushed. The second she saw me, she hung up immediately. "Who was that?" I asked casually. "Telemarketer." She refused to look me in the eye. I didn't think much of it at the time. Back then, I was so exhausted every day that all I wanted to do was crash into bed. I didn't have the energy to monitor what my mother-in-law was up to. Until I got that call from the attorney's office. The next day, I took a half-day off work and drove straight to the law firm. The man who received me was a young attorney with glasses, Mr. Hayes. "Ms. Davis, here is the situation. Mr. Robert Sterling’s will had an amendment notarized and filed three months ago." "An amendment?" "Yes. The original beneficiary was Mark Sterling. The amended beneficiary is—" He flipped a page in his file. "Chloe Bennett." Chloe Bennett. I searched my brain. I didn't know anyone by that name. "Who is Chloe Bennett? What's her relation to the Sterling family?" Mr. Hayes hesitated. "Well... we aren't entirely sure. The amendment paperwork was submitted by proxy through Martha Higgins, utilizing a Power of Attorney supposedly granted by Robert Sterling, alongside an amendment application." "Wait a minute." My ears started ringing. "My father-in-law died five years ago. How could he grant a Power of Attorney three months ago?" Mr. Hayes pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. "That is exactly why we contacted you." He slid a document across the desk toward me. "During an internal audit, we noticed some red flags regarding the signature on this Power of Attorney. Mr. Robert Sterling’s signature here has glaring discrepancies compared to the signatures we have on file for him." I looked down at the document. On the Power of Attorney form, my father-in-law’s name was written in a shaky, crooked scrawl. Robert had been an accountant. His handwriting was always pristine, sharp, and perfectly aligned. This signature looked like someone had clumsily traced it. "Are you saying—" "We suspect this Power of Attorney may be a forgery," Mr. Hayes said gravely. "Therefore, we are required to verify this with the legal heirs listed in the original will." Forgery. My hands began to tremble. 1.5 million dollars. Someone had forged my dead father-in-law's signature to transfer $1.5 million from my husband to a woman named Chloe Bennett. And the person who processed this paperwork was my mother-in-law. I sat in the leather chair, my mind flashing to a single image— Just this morning, before I left for work, Martha had been lounging on the sofa watching TV. She had called out to me: "Pick up my blood pressure meds on your way home!" And I had said, "Okay." It was this exact woman. Behind my back, she was trying to steal 1.5 million dollars and put it in a stranger's name. I took a deep breath. "Mr. Hayes, is the original will still intact?" "It is. We have the original on file, and it maintains full legal authority. Because the amendment has been flagged for suspected fraud, it has been suspended indefinitely." "I need a certified copy of the original will." "Of course. I will have that drafted for you right away." I put the certified copy in my purse. When I left the law firm, I didn't go straight home. I stood on the sidewalk, pulled out my phone, and searched "Chloe Bennett." Nothing useful came up. Then, I pulled out Mark’s old phone. I had kept it charged since the accident, mostly to save some of his photos and voicemails for Lily. I had never snooped through it. Now, I opened his text messages. I scrolled down, contact by contact. A. B. C. No Chloe. I kept scrolling through his message history. Twenty minutes passed. Then I froze. There was a contact saved as "CeeCee." The very last text thread was from the day before Mark's fatal crash. "Come over early tomorrow. I made your favorite roast." Followed by a heart emoji. Mark had replied: "Sounds good, wifey." Wifey. He called her wifey. I tapped into her contact profile and opened her linked Instagram page. Her profile picture was a cat. Her most recent post was from one month after Mark died. It was a black-and-white photo of a sky, captioned: "Missing you forever." I kept scrolling down. Two years ago. Three years ago. Selfies. Long hair, round face, dimples when she smiled. Then, I found a photo of them together. Her and Mark. At a restaurant. Mark had his arm draped over her shoulder. He was grinning from ear to ear. The location tag under the photo: Oakwood Apartments. That date was my wedding anniversary. That was the night Mark had texted me saying he had to work late at the firm and couldn't make it home. I stared at that photo. I stared at it for a long, long time. Then I clicked on her "About" section. Her email address was listed. chloebennett92@... Chloe. Bennett. 1.5 million dollars. This was the person my mother-in-law was trying to give the money to. My husband’s mistress. I didn't go home. I drove straight to Oakwood Apartments. It was an older, slightly rundown complex about a forty-minute drive from my house. I parked and walked up to the directory board at the entrance. The security guard at the booth glanced at me. "Who are you looking for?" "Chloe Bennett." "Chloe Bennett?" The guard scratched his head. "Building 3, Unit 402?" "Yes." I had no idea why I confirmed it so confidently. But the guard nodded and buzzed me through the pedestrian gate. I walked up to the fourth floor. The door to 402 was painted white. A pair of men's slippers sat on the welcome mat. Size 10. Mark was a size 10. I didn't knock. I stood by the door and listened. I could hear the faint sound of a TV playing cartoons. And the sound of a toddler laughing. A toddler. My heart plummeted like a stone. I turned around and walked back down the stairs. Back in my car, I sat in silence for a very long time. Then, I made a phone call. Not to Martha. I called Sarah. Sarah was a clerk at the estate attorney's office, and she happened to be the older cousin of one of my college friends. She was the one who helped process my father-in-law's original will years ago. "Sarah, I need to ask you a huge favor." "Shoot." "Three months ago, when someone brought in a fake Power of Attorney to amend my father-in-law's will... who was the clerk that handled it?" Sarah was silent for a moment. "Let me check the system." Half an hour later, she called me back. "Emma, this is... it's a bit complicated." "Tell me." "It was processed by a new guy, Kevin. He didn't scrutinize the signature closely enough. But the proxy form also had a copy of Robert's ID attached to it, along with a... Proof of Kinship document." "What Proof of Kinship?" "A document proving Chloe Bennett's relationship to the Sterling family." "What relationship?" Sarah paused. "The document states that Chloe Bennett's son, Leo Sterling, is the biological son of Mark Sterling."
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