Chapter 8 - The Papers in the Drawer
Nora didn’t tell Laura to stay calm.
She gave her something to do.
“Tell me every document you signed after the accident.”
Laura tried.
Hospital forms.
Insurance forms.
A temporary authorization allowing Marcos to handle business matters while she cared for him.
She stopped.
“That one.”
Nora looked up.
“He said it was for paying bills.”
“Do you have a copy?”
“No.”
“Did anyone explain it to you?”
“He did.”
Nora wrote something down.
“An authorization to handle certain matters isn’t proof that you’re incapable. And it doesn’t make forged signatures valid.”
Laura rubbed her forehead.
“He’ll make it look like I agreed.”
“Then we find what you actually agreed to.”
By evening, they had sent notices disputing the sale and challenging the documents.
Laura spoke directly with the closing agent.
The woman’s tone changed when Laura identified the signature as forged.
“We’ll need to pause this and have counsel review the file.”
For the first time that day, Laura took a full breath.
Then Marcos’s mother arrived at Elena’s apartment.
She stood in the hallway holding a covered dish.
As if dinner might settle it.
“He’s devastated,” she said.
Laura didn’t step aside.
“He walks.”
“He’s been trying to surprise you.”
Laura stared at her.
“Who told you that?”
“Marcos.”
“Did he tell you about Valeria?”
“She’s his therapist.”
“No. She isn’t.”
His mother tightened her grip on the dish.
“You always did react before thinking.”
Elena appeared behind Laura.
“Then she’s had two years to think about this.”
The older woman ignored her.
“He nearly died going to pick you up.”
Laura felt the familiar pressure in her chest.
Then she remembered something.
A detail so small she had let it disappear beneath everything that followed.
“I didn’t ask him to pick me up.”
His mother frowned.
“What?”
“I took a cab home that night.”
For a moment, the hallway went silent.
Laura had called him once from the studio.
He hadn’t answered.
Later, the hospital told her there had been an accident.
Marcos supplied the rest.
He said he had been coming for her.
She had been too frightened to question it.
Now she looked at his mother.
“Where was he actually going?”
May you like
The woman’s face went pale.
And Laura knew there was another story she had never been told.
