I only touched your phone because I was trying to call someone.”
“You forced my finger against it.”
“No.”
“You told me everyone would think I slipped and fell.”
Her eyes widened.
For half a second, Victoria forgot to control her face.
That was all I needed.
David saw it too.
“You said that?”
“She’s confused.
She blacked out.”
I reached slowly toward the folder.
“Give me the withdrawal form.”
David handed it to me.
My hands were weak, but my eyes still worked.
I turned the page sideways beneath the hospital light.
There they were.
The faint impressions I had noticed before the attack.
“Look here,” I told David.
He leaned closer.
“These marks are pressure impressions.
Someone wrote on a sheet placed on top of this one.”
Victoria’s face tightened.
“So?”
“So whoever assembled these documents reused the same writing surface.”
I traced the indentations without trying to read them aloud.
“If investigators recover the other papers, they may be able to determine what was written and whether these forms were prepared together.”
Victoria stepped backward.
That reaction mattered more than anything she said.
David noticed.
“What other papers, Victoria?”
“There aren’t any.”
“Then why are you scared?”
“I’m scared because your wife is trying to destroy our family.”
I almost answered.
Then Catherine’s voice came from the hallway.
“She already has.”
Security turned as my mother-in-law approached with another officer nearby.
Catherine looked immaculate from a distance.
Up close, the mask was slipping.
Her lipstick had faded.
Her jaw was tight.
She still carried herself like a woman entering a room she owned, but her eyes went straight to the folder.
Not to me.
Not to my stomach.
The folder.
That told me everything.
David stood.
“Mom.”
Catherine ignored him and looked at me.
“You need to correct this misunderstanding.”
I stared at her.
“A misunderstanding?”
“Victoria panicked.
You panicked.
Something physical happened.
