Chapter 9 - My Sister’s Deal
Maya found Jenna’s address through a recent utility account.
My goal was to learn what she took from box 418.
We drove to a townhouse twenty minutes from the bank. Rebecca stayed in the car with the documents while Ben and Maya approached with me.
Jenna opened the door before we knocked.
She stared at my burns, then at my belly.
“You weren’t supposed to be alive.”
Ben stepped forward.
Jenna backed away.
Inside, the black document case sat open on the table.
I pushed past her.
“What did you steal?”
She began crying.
“I thought Helen was helping Mom.”
“Mom is alive?”
Jenna covered her mouth.
That was the answer.
Maya found a signed agreement in the case.
Helen promised to pay for Evelyn’s long-term care if Jenna retrieved box 418 and signed a statement declaring me mentally unstable.
Jenna said our mother had been living under supervision in a private psychiatric facility.
“She doesn’t remember much,” Jenna whispered. “Helen said you abandoned her.”
My own sister had been fed the same kind of edited evidence Helen used against me.
The stolen file contained an amendment to Arthur’s trust.
It named me as sole controlling beneficiary immediately upon the birth of my first child.
Not the baby.
Me.
Helen could not inherit through Luke.
She could only gain access if I were declared incapacitated and Luke appointed as my guardian.
The garage attack was meant to force premature labor, then allow Dr. Ward to sedate me and document a psychiatric collapse.
The baby would survive.
I would legally disappear.
Jenna handed me a voice recorder.
“I recorded Helen yesterday.”
On it, Helen told her, “Caroline doesn’t need to die. Dead women create investigations. Broken women create guardianships.”
That was the clearest proof yet.
Then Jenna confessed something worse.
She had already delivered a blood sample to Dr. Ward.
“Whose blood?”
“Mom’s.”
Maya checked the stolen file.
A genetic incapacity report had been prepared claiming hereditary psychosis in the Parker maternal line.
Evelyn’s blood would be used to support it.
Rebecca called from the car.
“Someone just filed an emergency guardianship petition against Caroline.”
The petitioner was Luke.
Attached was a sworn statement from Jenna declaring I had threatened my unborn child.
Jenna shook her head violently.
“I never signed that version.”
The signature page was real.
The statement had been replaced.
Helen had used Jenna exactly as she used Luke.
Then the court issued a temporary order.
Luke Hayes was granted authority over my medical decisions pending a hearing at noon.
May you like
I thought escaping the garage had made me free—but the court had just given Luke legal power to return me to Dr. Ward.
The judge who signed that order was the same man reflected in the pharmacy glass.
