Chapter 9 - SOMEONE HAD SPOKEN IN HANNAH’S NAME
Erin remembered the call clearly.
Christmas week.
2011.
She was living in Tucson.
Eva had just turned one.
The number showed Connecticut.
A woman said:
“Erin?”
“Yes.”
“It’s Hannah.”
Erin had started crying immediately.
“I thought you hated me.”
The woman answered:
“I don’t hate you.”
Then:
“But I can’t keep doing this to Dad.”
Erin stopped crying.
The voice continued.
“Please stop calling. Stop sending letters. You made your choice.”
Erin remembered saying:
“I’m your sister.”
The answer:
“You stopped acting like it.”
Then the line went dead.
Hannah looked sick.
“That wasn’t me.”
Erin crossed her arms.
“I know your voice.”
“People’s voices change over phones.”
“Hannah.”
“I did not call you.”
Carter believed his wife.
Not automatically.
Because Hannah had spent the last week admitting things that made her look bad.
She had no reason to invent one clean denial now.
Luke asked:
“Could Mom have done it?”
Elizabeth had been dead four years.
“No.”
“Dad?”
Erin shook her head.
“Woman.”
Then Hannah whispered:
“Aunt Denise.”
Everyone stopped.
Douglas’s younger sister.
Denise Holloway.
She had worked part time at Hale & Son after Elizabeth died.
Handled phones.
Books.
Family errands.
“She sounded like me,” Hannah said.
Luke stared.
“You think Aunt Denise called Erin pretending to be you?”
“I don’t know.”
They called her.
Denise lived in Sarasota now.
She answered cheerfully.
Then Hannah asked about 2011.
Silence.
“Aunt Denise.”
“I don’t remember.”
“Did Dad ask you to call Erin?”
Another silence.
Carter watched Hannah’s face.
Finally Denise said:
“He said Erin was harassing you.”
Hannah closed her eyes.
“What did he ask?”
“To tell her you wanted no contact.”
“As me?”
Denise started crying.
“He said if I said I was calling for you, Erin wouldn’t believe it.”
“So you pretended.”
“I only did it once.”
Erin laughed from across the room.
“One was enough.”
Denise cried harder.
“Your father was falling apart.”
“That keeps being everybody’s excuse.”
“He lost Beth.”
“So did we.”
“He was trying to save the company.”
“With our trust.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Did you know about the waiver?”
“Some.”
“Did you know he told us Erin died?”
Denise became quiet.
“No.”
That sounded genuine.
The family lie had layers.
Not everyone knew every layer.
Douglas used people for specific tasks.
A signature here.
A phone call there.
Enough compartmentalization that each person could believe they were only helping.
Denise said:
“Hannah, there’s something you should know.”
“What?”
“Your dad didn’t start by wanting Erin gone.”
Erin stiffened.
“What does that mean?”
“He wanted her to come back.”
“When?”
“After Eva was born.”
Erin stared.
“He never knew about Eva.”
“He did.”
The room changed.
“How?”
“Private investigator.”
Erin’s face went white.
Denise continued.
“Doug said he wanted to fix things.”
“What stopped him?”
“Erin sent a letter.”
Erin frowned.
“What letter?”
“To Martin Cole.”
Her father’s former business partner.
Erin remembered.
She had asked Martin to preserve company books because she might challenge the trust.
Denise continued:
“Your dad found out.”
“And?”
“He said if Erin came back with lawyers, Hale & Son was finished.”
The business again.
Always the business.
Hannah asked:
“Why?”
Denise hesitated.
“Because by then the missing trust money was more than four hundred thousand.”
Everyone went silent.
The number was larger than their current accounting showed.
Leah said:
“We have about two hundred seventy thousand clearly tied to business or personal uses.”
Denise whispered:
“There was another account.”
“What account?”
“Your mother’s brokerage.”
The family believed Elizabeth’s brokerage account was part of the trust.
Denise said it was not.
“At least not at first.”
“What happened?”
“Beth changed the beneficiary designation near the end.”
“To whom?”
“All three children.”
Hannah stared.
“Then where did it go?”
Denise began crying again.
“Doug changed it back.”
Silence.
“After Mom died?”
“I don’t know exactly when.”
“That would be impossible without authorization.”
“I know.”
“Did you help?”
“No.”
“Who did?”
Denise whispered:
“Vincent Slater.”
The same lawyer who pressured Erin into the waiver.
Leah sat straighter.
“A beneficiary change on a brokerage account after death cannot simply be done. We need documents.”
Denise said:
“I saw a letter.”
“What letter?”
“From the brokerage saying beneficiary records had been corrected due to clerical error.”
“Corrected to Douglas?”
“Yes.”
“How much was the account?”
“About two hundred twenty thousand.”
Hannah closed her eyes.
The missing number fit.
Then Carter asked:
“Where is Vincent Slater now?”
Retired.
Still in Connecticut.
Still licensed until two years earlier.
Leah contacted him through counsel.
His response arrived the next day.
He denied wrongdoing.
Produced copies.
The beneficiary designation showed Douglas as primary beneficiary.
Elizabeth’s signature looked genuine.
Date:
Three months before death.
Then Erin stared at it.
“No.”
“What?”
“That witness.”
On the beneficiary form:
Witness: Douglas Hale.
Leah frowned.
“Depending on firm rules, that may still have been accepted.”
Erin shook her head.
“No. Look at the other witness.”
Second witness:
Hannah Marie Hale.
Hannah stared at the page.
“I never signed that.”
May you like
The ultimate family paperwork now contained Hannah’s name again.
And this time the signature looked disturbingly real.
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