Chapter 19 - THE NOTARY STAMP
The school did exactly what I needed them to do.
They kept Emma inside.
They called me.
They documented the incident.
And they gave Margaret nothing except a polite refusal.
By the time I arrived, she had left.
Emma was shaking in the counselor’s office.
“Did she almost take me?”
“No.”
That answer mattered.
Not “maybe.”
Not “I hope not.”
No.
The safeguards worked.
I hugged her until her breathing slowed.
Then I looked at the document Margaret had presented.
It carried a notary seal.
That made it look serious.
It did not make it valid.
Leah contacted the notary named on the page.
The woman responded through counsel.
She had never notarized the document.
Her stamp number had been copied from an old public filing.
More importantly, her journal contained no entry for me.
No identification check.
No signature.
No meeting.
The notary signed an affidavit stating exactly that.
Reward.
The “notarized consent” was not merely suspicious.
The named notary denied performing it.
Margaret’s attorney withdrew it from any attempted use almost immediately.
Then he requested permission from the court to withdraw as Margaret’s counsel.
I read the notice twice.
“Does that mean he knows she committed fraud?”
Leah shook her head.
“Do not assume reasons not stated in the filing.”
Again.
Facts.
Pike’s notice cited an irreconcilable breakdown in the attorney-client relationship.
Nothing more.
Margaret hired new counsel within three days.
But something had changed.
She was no longer controlling the pace.
The court ordered the parties to preserve electronic devices and relevant records.
The old iPad suddenly mattered more than ever.
Margaret claimed it had been lost months earlier.
Rebecca’s photograph contradicted that.
The recent login attempts contradicted it again.
Then Robert found a message from Margaret dated after she supposedly lost the device.
Can’t talk. Using Claire’s old tablet to pull the account records.
She had written it herself.
The lie was now documented.
Emma watched me print the message.
“Is this what makes it end?”
I wished I could say yes.
“No.”
Her face fell.
“But it makes the next lie harder.”
She nodded.
That was what progress looked like.
Not one magic piece of evidence.
A narrowing space in which deception could survive.
Then Leah received notice from the bank.
Margaret had attempted to request a change in mailing address for one of the girls’ accounts months earlier.
The request had been denied.
The reason?
The signature authorization did not match bank requirements.
May you like
Margaret had tried to move beyond viewing access before the guardianship petition was even filed.
📖 The bank had already blocked one attempt to redirect an account tied to my daughters, proving Margaret’s financial interest existed long before the birthday confrontation. 👇
