Naomi looked at him with visible regret.
“I should have made greater efforts to find you.”
Daniel barely seemed to hear her.
He was examining the signatures.
“Mom signed my name.”
“We’ll need an examiner to establish that,” Naomi replied. “But these records are serious grounds for investigation.”
Then she connected Thomas’s flash drive to her office computer.
His face appeared on the screen.
I had almost forgotten how gentle his eyes were.
He sat at the kitchen table, wearing the green cardigan June loved to tug whenever he lifted her onto his lap.
His voice was weaker than I remembered.
“If Daniel ever sees this, it means I wasn’t able to settle things while I was here.”
Daniel covered his mouth.
Thomas continued.
“I found draft amendments Evelyn wanted me to sign. I refused because they would leave Daniel’s family dependent on her permission to remain in the house.”
He paused to catch his breath.
“I don’t know what she’ll do after I’m gone. I hope she’ll come to understand that loving our son doesn’t mean owning him.”
Then he looked directly into the camera.
“Daniel, your wife has been kinder to your mother than your mother has ever been to her. Don’t make Sarah spend her life proving what should have been obvious to you.”
The recording ended.
Daniel began weeping.
I wanted to reach for him.
Part of me still remembered the young man who held my hand through seventeen hours of labor, who cried when June first opened her eyes, who used to leave warm coffee beside my laptop when I worked late.
But I also remembered standing alone in the apartment kitchen while June asked why Daddy wasn’t coming home.
Both memories belonged to the same man.
Love didn’t erase that.
Naomi gave us a moment before examining the financial records.
The leather notebook contained dates, account numbers, and Thomas’s observations about money disappearing from accounts during the last year of his life.
The later thefts required independent confirmation.
Naomi immediately contacted the bank’s fraud department and filed an emergency motion to prevent the sale of the property.
