Chapter 6 - Fire in the Snow
Brenda lunged toward the documents.
Michael pulled the folder away.
The lighter flame touched the edge of the loan application, but Sheriff Dalton seized Brenda’s wrist before the paper caught.
She screamed and fought him.
Sarah ran.
Jason moved first.
He chased her across the icy driveway as she slipped between the parked cars. She reached Brenda’s SUV, yanked open the door, and searched frantically inside.
“Sarah!” Jason shouted.
She emerged holding a metal lockbox.
Then she ran toward the trees.
The snow was knee-deep beyond the driveway. She made it twenty yards before falling.
The lockbox burst open.
Papers scattered across the white ground.
I saw copies of my driver’s license.
My property-tax statements.
Robert’s death certificate.
Bank records.
Every private document Sarah had needed to become me on paper.
Jason reached her but didn’t touch her.
He simply stood over his wife as she crawled after the pages.
“How long?” he asked.
Sarah grabbed a copy of my signature.
“How long have you been planning this?”
She looked up at him, mascara running down her cheeks.
“Since your mother refused to sell.”
I remembered the conversation.
Six months earlier, Sarah had suggested I sell the cabin because it was “too much responsibility for a widow.” She said the money could help Jason and her buy a larger house.
I had refused.
So she had chosen a different route.
Sheriff Dalton handcuffed Brenda first, then Sarah.
“You’re making a mistake,” Brenda told him.
“No,” he said. “You made several.”
As the patrol car pulled away, Jason stood motionless in the driveway.
I wanted to comfort him.
I also wanted to shake him.
“You gave her the security code,” I said.
He nodded.
“You signed papers without reading them.”
Another nod.
“You knew her family was coming here.”
“I thought you had agreed.”
“Did that sound like me?”
His eyes filled with tears. “No.”
“Then why didn’t you call?”
He looked down.
“Because it was easier not to ask.”
That answer hurt more than a lie.
Michael helped collect the scattered documents. Near the edge of the woods, he found an envelope marked DIANE—MEDICAL.
Inside was a letter on my doctor’s stationery.
It claimed I had been diagnosed with early-stage dementia.
The letter was fake.
But clipped behind it was a petition asking the court to appoint Jason as my legal guardian.
My son stared at his own name.
“I didn’t know.”
I believed him.
But belief did not erase the danger.
Someone hadn’t just tried to take my cabin.
They had begun building a legal case to take control of my entire life.
Then Michael’s phone rang.
May you like
He listened for thirty seconds before looking at me.
“The cabin wasn’t their only target.”
