“Of course you are.
Poor little Trevor.
Five years of pretending to be a wealthy businessman, and now you’ve run straight back to Mommy.”
“What do you want, Kristen?” he demanded.
“What belongs to me.”
“You robbed me.”
“I made sure I was protected.”
“You went behind my back to Kessler.”
“I spoke to everybody.”
A cold sensation passed through me.
Everybody.
Then Kristen addressed me directly.
“Gloria, since I’m certain you can hear every word, I suggest you look at your email.”
My telephone vibrated inside my coat pocket.
A new message had arrived from an unfamiliar email address.
The subject read:
Raymond Sutter Trust Documents.
My hand froze before I could fully reach into my pocket.
Kristen’s voice became almost affectionate.
“You really ought to have explained to Trevor what his father left behind for him.”
Everything around me seemed to contract.
The gate.
My son’s pale face.
The rosemary fragrance drifting through the cold air.
My dead husband’s name appearing in an email sent by a stranger.
“Mom?”
Trevor whispered, his voice full of confusion and terror.
“What’s she talking about?”
I opened the message.
There was a single attachment.
A scanned legal document.
At the top appeared a title I hadn’t laid eyes on for seventeen years.
The Raymond Sutter Irrevocable Family Trust.
Below it was a page containing signatures.
Mine.
Raymond’s.
And a third signature I had never seen before.
Trustee: Kristen Lynn Sutter.
A chill deeper than the February weather passed through me.
Seventeen years earlier, Kristen hadn’t been part of our family.
She hadn’t even met Trevor.
Yet somehow, her name had appeared on a legal trust established by my late husband.
I stared at the impossible signature.
Through Trevor’s telephone, Kristen began laughing.
Then she spoke again.
“Now, Gloria, let’s discuss who actually owns everything.”
