Chapter 4 - The Story Wendy Built Around My Mother
Nathan Cole returned my call the next morning.
His reaction surprised me.
“Mr. Moretti, I think we need to meet.”
“Why?”
“Not over the phone.”
We met at his office at eleven.
Nathan was younger than I expected, perhaps thirty-eight, with the exhausted expression of a man who had recently realized a client had lied to him.
He placed a file on the table.
“Your wife came to me approximately two months ago.”
“For what?”
“She represented that your mother was experiencing cognitive decline and wanted assistance restructuring her finances.”
“Did you meet my mother?”
“No.”
That answer clearly embarrassed him.
“Why not?”
“Mrs. Moretti said Jessi refused to leave the house.”
“She wasn't refusing.”
“I understand that now.”
He showed me emails.
Wendy had told him Mom was forgetful.
Confused.
Increasingly incapable of managing money.
She claimed I supported the process but was too busy traveling to attend meetings.
“Did she forge my approval?”
“No. She never provided it.”
“Then why proceed?”
“We prepared drafts. We did not execute them.”
“What about the document naming you successor agent?”
Nathan's expression hardened.
“I didn't authorize that.”
Now he looked angry.
He printed copies of Wendy's emails for my attorney, should I choose to pursue legal action.
One sentence stood out.
Luca doesn't need to be involved until everything is finalized. He becomes emotional about his mother.
Wendy had anticipated me.
She had designed the story before committing the act.
That afternoon, Mom underwent a cognitive evaluation.
She passed.
Not perfectly—she was seventy-three—but there was no evidence supporting Wendy's claims that she couldn't understand her finances.
When I told Mom what Wendy had been saying, she closed her eyes.
“She kept telling me I was forgetting things.”
“What things?”
“She would move my purse. Then ask why I'd misplaced it.”
My stomach twisted.
“My medicine would disappear. Then she'd find it somewhere I knew I hadn't put it.”
“Anything else?”
“She'd tell me we'd had conversations we never had.”
I sat beside her.
“Why didn't you tell me?”
“I tried.”
“When?”
“The Boston trip.”
I remembered that call.
Mom had sounded upset.
Wendy had taken the phone.
“She told me you were confused.”
Mom nodded.
“And you believed her.”
There was no accusation in her voice.
That made it worse.
“Yes.”
She touched my hand.
“You trusted your wife.”
“I should've trusted you.”
“You didn't know.”
“I should have known.”
“No.”
Her voice became unexpectedly firm.
“Don't take Wendy's choices and turn them into your punishment.”
I looked at her.
For the first time since coming home, I saw my mother rather than a victim.
Jessi had survived my father's cancer.
She had worked two jobs after he died.
She had raised me to believe composure mattered.
Wendy had frightened her.
She hadn't erased her.
“There’s something else,” Mom said.
She told me about the night everything changed.
Three weeks earlier, she had overheard Wendy on the phone discussing an account transfer.
Mom confronted her.
Wendy denied it.
Then Mom said she wanted to call me.
“That's when she took my phone.”
“What happened to your wrist?”
Mom looked down.
“I tried to take it back.”
I didn't ask for more detail.
I didn't need it.
“Afterward she told me you'd never believe me because everyone already knew I was confused.”
The architecture of Wendy's plan became clear.
Isolation.
Discrediting.
Control.
Then money.
That evening, Wendy tried again.
She stood in our bedroom packing a suitcase.
“I can't live like this.”
I leaned against the door.
“Like what?”
“Like a criminal.”
I said nothing.
“Your mother hates me.”
“No, Wendy. She's afraid of you.”
“She fell!”
“The doctor documented multiple injuries.”
“She bruises easily.”
“The bank documented unauthorized transfers.”
Her face changed.
There.
For the first time, I had told her what I knew.
“What transfers?”
“Interesting question.”
“Luca—”
“Twenty-four thousand eight hundred dollars.”
Silence.
Then Wendy laughed.
Actually laughed.
“She gave me that.”
“No.”
“You weren't there.”
“The bank is investigating.”
That stopped her.
I watched calculations move behind her eyes.
“Fine,” she said. “I borrowed it.”
“Without asking?”
“She said I could.”
“She didn't.”
“You'll believe anything she says.”
“Then explain the forged signature.”
Her face drained.
“What signature?”
I walked away.
Behind me, she shouted my name.
I didn't answer.
At 6:12 the next morning, Denise called.
The bank had completed a preliminary review of the pending documents.
The attempted transfer wasn't for $100,000.
Or $200,000.
The authorization would have moved the entire eligible balance.
$782,416.
And processing had originally been scheduled for Thursday morning at nine.
I looked at the clock.
8:37.
Twenty-three minutes.
If my Chicago meetings had ended on schedule, I would still have been hundreds of miles away.
Mom would still have been isolated.
Wendy would still control her phone.
And in twenty-three minutes, nearly eight hundred thousand dollars could have started moving beyond my mother's reach.
My early flight hadn't interrupted Wendy's plan by days.
May you like
It had interrupted it by less than twenty-four hours.
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