Chương 14 - The Signature She Chose
The call ended.
I dialed back.
Nothing.
Hannah contacted the investigators.
We stayed inside the shop with the doors locked.
Twenty minutes later, Vanessa appeared on the sidewalk.
Alone.
She knocked on the glass.
My mother moved toward the door.
I caught her hand.
“Wait.”
Vanessa held up her empty palms.
Then she placed her phone on the pavement and stepped away from it.
Hannah let her inside after an investigator checked the street.
Vanessa’s mascara had run.
I hated that part of me still wanted to feel sorry for her.
“Where’s Adrian?” Hannah asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Who took your phone?”
“My father.”
She sat in the customer chair beside the fitting room.
The same chair where women argued about hems and brides cried over sleeves.
“I signed something last night,” Vanessa said.
Hannah went still.
“What?”
“A statement saying Grace planted the device.”
I looked at her.
“You gave us the messages.”
“I know.”
“You told us he wanted me framed.”
“I know.”
“Then you signed the lie anyway?”
“My father said he’d leave me with every debt in my name.”
“You had a lawyer sitting downstairs.”
“He said Luca would abandon me.
He said Grace would walk away with protection, and I’d be the only one left.”
Her voice broke.
“I believed him.”
For the first time, I saw the shape of her cruelty.
She could be frightened.
She could know she was wrong.
And she could still choose someone weaker to pay for it.
Hannah asked when she signed.
“Forty minutes ago.”
“Did anyone force your hand?”
“No.”
“Then your correction needs to be just as clear.”
Vanessa nodded.
She began recording a new statement.
Before she finished, a black car stopped outside.
Adrian stepped out carrying a leather folder.
He looked like a man arriving for a routine closing.
The investigators approached him.
He raised his hands politely.
Inside the folder was Vanessa’s signed accusation.
And a photocopy of a check made payable to my father.
Twenty thousand dollars.
“He accepted settlement money,” Adrian said through the open doorway.
“His daughter knows exactly what this is.”
I stared at the signature.
Daniel Parker.
It looked like my father’s handwriting.
My mother made a small, wounded sound.
Adrian smiled at me.
May you like
Then he added, “The original recording is in my office.
Give me the notebook, and your family can finally stop embarrassing itself.”
