Chapter 7: Patricia's Office
Patricia Holt's office was on the fourteenth floor of a building that smelled like old carpet and central heating.
She met me at the elevator herself — a small woman in her sixties with reading glasses pushed up on her head and a legal pad already in her hand.
"Gerald," she said, nodding at him.
Then to me: "Nora.
You look like your father when he was angry.
That's a compliment."
She led us to a conference room with a long table and closed the blinds.
I laid everything out.
The contract.
The folder.
The recorder.
The screenshots of the unknown text message.
Patricia listened to the recording once without interrupting.
When it finished, she set her pen down flat on the table.
"Right," she said.
"Here is where we are.
The forged transfer document has been flagged and held.
We have approximately fifty-eight hours remaining on that hold.
The firm pushing the transfer is called Meridian Estate Solutions — a shell, almost certainly, set up specifically for this filing.
I have a colleague in the AG's office who has been building a case against that firm for fourteen months."
Gerald looked up.
"They're already under investigation?"
"The Mercer family in Connecticut filed a complaint two years ago.
It stalled.
But it never closed." Patricia tapped the folder.
"With your father's documentation and this recording, the Mercer complaint becomes a pattern.
A provable, dated, multi-family pattern." She looked at me.
"This is no longer just about your estate, Nora.
This is a fraud case."
"What do you need from me?"
"A formal statement.
Today.
Signed." She slid the legal pad across the table.
"And I need you to make a decision about Ethan."
I looked at the pad.
"What kind of decision?"
"If Ethan was a willing participant, he is part of the fraud.
If he was used by his mother without full knowledge, he may be a witness.
The difference matters legally and it matters for the timeline." She folded her hands.
"Do you know which he is?"
The question sat in the room.
I thought about the date on the document — three weeks before our first date.
I thought about the way he had said *you don't understand what you're looking at* on the phone.
Not *that's not true.* Not *I didn't know.* Just: *you don't understand.*
"I don't know," I said.
"But I think he does."
Patricia nodded once.
"Then we proceed as if he is a potential witness, not a target.
That gives him a chance to come forward voluntarily.
If he doesn't take it—" She picked up her pen.
"Then he made his choice."
I wrote my statement in longhand on the legal pad.
Three pages.
Every detail I could remember, in order, from the morning Barbara stormed into my bedroom to the moment I walked out of the bank.
When I finished, Patricia read it without comment, then signed as witness at the bottom.
"I'm filing the counter-document with the estate court this afternoon," she said.
"I'm also sending a copy of the recording and your father's folder to my contact at the AG's office." She looked at me over her reading glasses.
"By tomorrow morning, Barbara Harlow is going to know that the window has closed."
"And then what does she do?" I asked.
Patricia considered this.
"In my experience, people like Barbara do one of two things when they realize they've lost.
They disappear quietly, or they make one last move." She stood and gathered the documents into a neat stack.
"Either way, you should not be alone tonight."
Gerald walked me to the elevator after Patricia returned to her desk.
"Where will you go?" he asked.
"I don't know yet." I pressed the button.
"Somewhere she doesn't know about."
The elevator opened.
I stepped in.
"Nora." Gerald held the door for a moment.
"Your father — he talked about you often, in those last months.
He said you were the one thing he'd done right." He let the door go.
"I thought you should know that."
The doors closed.
I pressed the button for the lobby and looked at my reflection in the polished metal.
My phone buzzed in my bag.
A text from Ethan: *Barbara is gone.
She took her car and her passport.
Nora — whatever she's done, I swear I didn't know all of it.
Please.
I need to talk to you.*
I read it twice.
May you like
Then I forwarded it to Patricia with one line: *He just made his choice.
He's ready to talk.*
