Chapter 15 - The Night Thomas Reached the Stairs
Thomas did not die peacefully in bed.
That detail had never appeared in the family’s public story.
Curtis admitted finding him at the bottom of the staircase.
Elaine told paramedics he had collapsed after experiencing chest pain.
Curtis repeated the story.
But Thomas’s medical records documented bruising along his back and one wrist.
The injuries were attributed to the fall.
Curtis now admitted there had been an argument.
Thomas discovered the forged will on Elaine’s desk.
He confronted her.
Curtis arrived as Thomas tried to call Rebecca’s military contact number.
Elaine took the phone.
Thomas reached for it.
Curtis stepped between them.
“What happened next?” Rebecca asked.
Curtis looked toward the floor.
“Dad pushed past me.”
“Did you touch him?”
“I grabbed his arm.”
“How hard?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did he fall?”
“No. Not then.”
Thomas walked toward the stairs.
Elaine followed.
She continued arguing.
Curtis remained in the hallway.
Then he heard a crash.
“Did you see your mother push him?”
“No.”
“Did you see him fall?”
“No.”
“What did Elaine say?”
Curtis’s voice became barely audible.
“She said he slipped.”
“And you believed her?”
“I wanted to.”
Elaine’s attorney objected repeatedly.
The judge allowed the questioning.
Curtis admitted that after the ambulance left, Elaine ordered him to remove papers from Thomas’s desk.
One of those papers was the original will.
They burned it in the fireplace.
Curtis cried as he described it.
Rebecca felt no satisfaction.
Her brother had not become honest because he loved their father.
He became honest because he feared being blamed.
Still, the truth mattered.
The court ordered a formal investigation into the circumstances of Thomas’s death.
The will hearing would continue separately.
Elaine looked at Rebecca with naked hatred.
“You did this.”
Rebecca shook her head.
May you like
“No. You just ran out of people willing to lie for you.”
👉 Elaine’s control was gone, but Rebecca still had to face the question that had haunted her since the funeral: why had her mother hated her service so much?
