Chapter 6 - The Fake Witness
The typed witness statement contained a second signature.
Thomas Greene.
My next-door neighbor.
I called Rebecca immediately.
“Thomas wasn’t even home.”
“How do you know?”
“He and his wife were in Charleston.”
Rebecca confirmed it.
Thomas’s signature was not genuine.
When Detective Keating showed him the document, Thomas laughed at first.
Then stopped when he realized police were serious.
“I never wrote this.”
The statement claimed he had seen me “agitated around Marissa’s daughter on previous occasions.”
“I’ve barely seen that child.”
Thomas provided travel receipts and home-alarm records establishing he was out of state.
Another forged document.
Gloria’s explanation shifted.
She claimed Marissa gave her the statement.
Marissa denied it.
Then police examined file metadata from the copy Gloria had emailed her first attorney.
The document originated from a laptop registered to Gloria.
Created:
three days before the bedroom incident.
Three days.
The accident had paperwork before it happened.
That moved the situation from spontaneous bad judgment toward planning.
Investigators reviewed Gloria’s browser history after obtaining devices through proper legal process related to the suspected false report and document forgery.
Searches included:
homeowner liability child injury
employer retaliation domestic worker
can grandmother get emergency custody if mother endangers child
That last search occurred eleven days before Sophie entered my bedroom.
Long before Gloria could claim Marissa’s actions that morning caused her concern.
Then another:
what evidence needed emergency guardianship nc
And:
CPS placement with grandparent priority
Rebecca looked at the timeline.
“This is no longer mainly about you.”
I knew.
But I didn’t yet understand why Gloria would sacrifice her daughter to get Sophie.
Erin did.
“Our mother thinks Marissa is going to ruin Sophie’s life.”
“Why?”
“Because Eric left.”
“That isn’t Marissa’s fault.”
“You’re assuming Gloria uses normal logic.”
She told me about Marissa’s childhood.
Gloria had raised three daughters after their father disappeared.
She prided herself on survival.
Erin became independent early.
Marissa remained close.
Too close.
Whenever Marissa made decisions Gloria disliked, Gloria described them as disasters.
College.
Boyfriends.
Jobs.
Moving into my carriage apartment.
Then Sophie was born.
Gloria stopped acting like grandmother was a relationship.
May you like
She started acting like it was a qualification.
And apparently she had been looking for a way to turn that qualification into legal authority.
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