Chapter 3 - What They Wanted From MeI left Asheville at six the next morning.
Catherine tried to convince me to eat breakfast first.
I couldn’t.
Three hundred miles of highway stretched between me and the house Daniel and I had once dreamed about growing old in together.
I drove most of it in silence.
The cottage had originally belonged to my mother.
It was a modest 1950s house with narrow hallways, creaking floors, and a kitchen so small that opening the dishwasher blocked the refrigerator.
After Mom died, she left it equally to my sister, Elaine, and me.
Elaine wanted cash.
I wanted the cottage.
So Daniel and I bought out her half.
At the time, Elaine had been thrilled.
She received $86,000 and used part of it to pay off debt.
That transaction mattered now.
Because somewhere over the years, Naomi had apparently stopped viewing the house as something I bought and started viewing it as something the family had somehow lost.
The first sign appeared after Daniel died.
Naomi had walked through the cottage one afternoon and said, “It’s crazy that one person owns this much house.”
Three bedrooms.
One thousand six hundred square feet.
Hardly a palace.
I laughed it off.
I did that too often.
By the time I reached Tennessee, Martin was waiting in the driveway.
So was Ruth.
She hugged me before I even opened the trunk.
“I’m sorry, Maggie.”
“You have nothing to apologize for.”
“I should’ve called sooner. I saw them around lunchtime yesterday, but I thought maybe you knew.”
That meant Naomi had entered hours earlier than I realized.
“Did you see anyone else?”
Ruth frowned.
“A man.”
“Brent?”
“No. Older. Nice car.”
Martin and I exchanged a look.
“What kind?”
“Black sedan. Maybe a Mercedes.”
“Did he go inside?”
“For about twenty minutes.”
That was not comforting.
Inside, the house smelled wrong.
Not damaged.
Occupied.
Someone else’s shampoo in my shower.
Children’s cereal on my counter.
A phone charger beside my bed.
Naomi’s makeup bag on Daniel’s old dresser.
She had forgotten it.
I stood in the bedroom doorway and stared.
Martin waited behind me.
“You okay?”
“No.”
That was the most truthful answer I had.
“I feel like somebody climbed inside my skin.”
He nodded.
“That’s what a home invasion feels like, even when the person entering knows you.”
We went into the office.
Martin had already photographed everything.
The deed copy bothered him most.
My original deed was still there.
So were my financial files.
But several documents had clearly been copied.
“How can you tell?”
“The paper stack was reversed. You’re organized enough that I doubt you stored tax records backward.”
Despite everything, I smiled faintly.
Daniel used to tease me about arranging spice jars alphabetically.
“What could Naomi do with copies?”
“Probably nothing legally by themselves.”
“Probably?”
“Let me finish.”
He sat across from me.
“The bigger question is why she wanted them.”
Then my phone rang.
Elaine.
My sister.
I let it ring.
Martin raised an eyebrow.
“You’re not answering?”
“I’m enjoying the last three seconds before I’m blamed for everything.”
The phone stopped.
Immediately, it rang again.
I answered.
Elaine didn’t say hello.
“What did you do?”
There it was.
“What did Naomi tell you?”
“She said you called the police on her children.”
“I called the police because four people moved into my home without permission.”
“She was desperate!”
“She had two weeks to call me.”
“She knew you would say no.”
I stared at the wall.
“Then she already had my answer.”
Elaine exhaled loudly.
“Margaret, you have always been stubborn when you get emotional.”
I almost admired the creativity of that sentence.
Naomi burglarized my boundaries, and somehow I was emotional.
“Why did Naomi copy my deed?”
Silence.
There was my answer.
Elaine knew something.
“Elaine?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I didn’t say she copied it. I asked why.”
“You just said—”
“You know something.”
“No.”
“Then tell me who visited yesterday in a black Mercedes.”
Another silence.
Longer.
Martin leaned forward.
I put the phone on speaker.
“Elaine.”
Her voice dropped.
“Naomi has been talking to somebody.”
“Who?”
“A real estate investor.”
My stomach tightened.
“About what?”
“The house.”
Martin’s face changed.
“What about my house?”
“She was just exploring options.”
“It isn’t hers to explore.”
“I know that.”
“Do you?”
Elaine snapped.
“Don’t talk to me like I’m stupid.”
“Then stop giving me reasons to ask obvious questions.”
Martin gave me an approving glance.
Elaine clearly wasn’t accustomed to hearing that version of me.
Finally she said, “Naomi thought maybe you could sell.”
“Why?”
“She and Brent need money.”
I actually laughed.
Not because anything was funny.
Because the alternative was screaming.
“They need money, so I should sell my home?”
“She said the property values have gone crazy. You could get six hundred thousand, maybe more. Buy a condo and help them with the difference.”
Martin closed his eyes.
I felt strangely calm.
“How much did she think I should give them?”
“I don’t know.”
“Elaine.”
“Two hundred thousand.”
There are moments when betrayal is so absurd it becomes clarifying.
My niece had not simply moved into my cottage because she needed emergency shelter.
She had looked at the home I spent years renovating for retirement and calculated how much money she believed she could extract from it.
“Whose idea was this?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you encourage her?”
“No.”
Too fast.
“Elaine.”
“I said you might consider helping if she explained how bad things were.”
“With two hundred thousand dollars?”
“I never said that amount!”
“But you discussed selling my cottage.”
“I was trying to help everybody!”
“No. You were trying to help Naomi with my property.”
She started crying.
That tactic had run through two generations.
“Mom would be heartbroken if she saw what was happening to this family.”
I looked around the room my mother once used for sewing.
“Mom sold you exactly half this cottage when we settled the estate, and you accepted the money.”
“I know.”
“You don’t get to inherit it twice.”
Martin looked at me sharply.
That sentence seemed to land.
Elaine became quiet.
Then she said something I hadn’t expected.
“You need to understand, Margaret. Naomi owes people.”
“What people?”
“I don’t know everything.”
“How much?”
“At least sixty thousand.”
My chest tightened.
“For what?”
“Credit cards. Loans. Maybe taxes.”
“Maybe?”
“Brent’s business failed.”
“His construction business?”
“Yes.”
I had been told he was between contracts.
Apparently “between contracts” meant insolvent.
Elaine continued.
“They could lose everything.”
“They already lost the rental.”
“Yes.”
“So instead of telling me the truth, Naomi decided to move into my home and investigate selling it?”
“She thought once you saw the children settled there, you’d let them stay.”
There it was.
The plan.
Not a misunderstanding.
Not desperation.
Strategy.
Get inside.
Change utilities.
Establish residence.
Make removal emotionally difficult.
Then pressure me to sell.
I suddenly remembered something.
“Elaine, did Naomi ask you about my will?”
Silence.
Martin’s eyes locked on mine.
“Elaine?”
“I don’t remember.”
“You remember.”
“She asked who gets the cottage someday.”
My fingers went cold.
“What did you tell her?”
“I assumed her.”
“Why?”
“You don’t have children.”
Martin slowly leaned back.
My trust left most of my estate to charitable organizations, with specific gifts to several relatives, including Naomi’s children.
Naomi herself would receive twenty-five thousand dollars.
Apparently someone expected more.
“Does Naomi know what my will says?”
“I told her I didn’t know.”
“Did she search my office looking for it?”
“How would I know?”
“Because she had the emergency key you gave her.”
Elaine became defensive.
“She said they needed somewhere to sleep!”
“You gave her the key before or after she discussed selling my house?”
Silence.
That told me everything.
I ended the call.
For several minutes neither Martin nor I spoke.
Then he placed both hands on my desk.
“Margaret, I want to change every lock today.”
“Yes.”
“I want fraud alerts on your credit.”
“Yes.”
“I want you to notify the utility companies that nobody has authority to make account changes.”
“Yes.”
“And I want to contact the real estate investor who visited yesterday.”
“How?”
Ruth had remembered part of the license plate.
Martin knew someone who could help identify the business if the man had legitimately been marketing real estate services.
But we didn’t have to wait long.
At 2:18 that afternoon, someone knocked.
A man stood outside wearing an expensive gray suit.
Black Mercedes behind him.
Martin and I exchanged a glance.
I opened the door but left the security chain fastened.
“Yes?”
“Margaret Sullivan?”
“Yes.”
He smiled.
“My name is Peter Wallace. I’m here regarding the purchase proposal.”
“What purchase proposal?”
His smile disappeared.
“The one your niece authorized.”
Martin appeared beside me.
“I’m Margaret Sullivan’s attorney.”
Peter looked from Martin to me.
Then back again.
Something drained from his face.
“I think,” he said slowly, “I may have been given false information.”
Martin opened the door.
“Then perhaps you’d better come inside.”
Twenty minutes later, I learned my niece hadn’t merely been hoping to convince me to sell my cottage.
May you like
She had already tried to sell it.
And according to the paperwork Peter placed on my kitchen table, she expected to collect $75,000 before I ever returned home.
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