Chapter 5: The Call at Midnight
I put the phone on speaker so Brooke could hear.
Dana's voice was different from the recording.
Tighter.
Faster.
"I need you to understand something," she said.
"I'm not the villain in this.
Grant told me he was separated.
He told me the marriage had been over for two years.
He told me Brooke knew about us."
"She didn't," I said.
"I know that now." A pause.
"I found out three months ago that he'd been lying to me too.
About everything."
Brooke leaned forward.
"Then why are you calling my mother at midnight?"
A silence.
Then: "Because Grant called me an hour ago.
He told me if I cooperated with any investigation, he would tell the police that the recording was my idea.
That I was the one who advised him to commit fraud.
That I was his accomplice."
"Were you?" Brooke asked.
"No.
I said what you heard on that recording.
I didn't know the deed was fraudulent.
I didn't know the notary stamp was forged.
I thought he owned the house outright.
He told me you'd signed it over to him when you refinanced."
Brooke sat back.
"He lied to both of us."
"Yes." Dana's voice cracked slightly.
"I have my own recordings.
Things he said to me about you.
About what he was planning.
I kept them because I got scared.
I didn't know what to do with them."
I looked at Brooke.
She was very still.
"What kind of things?" I asked.
Dana hesitated.
"He said that once the house was secured, he was going to push for a divorce on the grounds of emotional instability.
He had a plan to have Brooke evaluated.
He knew a doctor who would — he said it would make her look unreliable in court.
Make anything she claimed seem like the product of a troubled mind."
The air in the room went thin.
Brooke's hand found the edge of the table.
She pressed her palm flat against it.
"He was going to have me declared unstable," she said.
Not a question.
"He called it his insurance policy," Dana said quietly.
"I'm sorry.
I should have come forward sooner.
I was afraid of him."
Brooke looked at me.
Her expression wasn't shock.
It was something worse — the recognition of a plan she had come within reach of falling into.
"Send everything you have to Patricia Hale," Brooke said.
"Tonight.
Her email is on her firm's website.
Tell her Brooke sent you."
"Will she help me?"
"That's not my concern right now," Brooke said.
"But what you send her tonight will help my case.
That's what matters."
She ended the call.
For a moment neither of us spoke.
Then Brooke said, "He had a doctor lined up."
"Yes."
"He was going to make me look crazy so nothing I said would hold up."
"Yes."
She stood up and walked to the kitchen window.
Stood there with her back to me.
"Mom," she said quietly.
"I almost didn't make that folder.
I started it and then deleted it twice because I thought I was being paranoid."
I crossed the room and stood beside her.
"You weren't paranoid," I said.
"You were right."
She nodded slowly.
May you like
But I could see her shoulders shaking.
And that was when my daughter — who had held herself together through the restaurant, through the police, through the parking lot, through Dana's call — finally let herself cry.
