Chapter 4 - My Mother's Missing Locket
Dad arrived at Natalie's house carrying a wooden box.
He didn't ask to hold Lily.
That surprised me.
Instead, he placed the box on the kitchen table.
"I found this last night."
Inside were photographs, documents, my mother's old watch, and several handwritten letters.
But no necklace.
"Diane packed your mother's belongings after she moved in," Dad said.
I stared at him.
"You let her?"
"I couldn't look at them."
My anger rose.
"That wasn't her decision to make."
"I know."
"When did you notice the necklace was missing?"
"About six months after Diane moved in."
"And you never told me?"
"I thought I'd misplaced it."
Dad opened one of the letters.
It wasn't written by my mother.
It was written by Diane.
Eleven years earlier.
Robert, you cannot keep living with ghosts. Caroline is gone. Emily is building her own life. You deserve to move forward.
I looked at Dad.
"How long after Mom died did you start seeing Diane?"
"Fourteen months."
"How did you meet?"
His answer made my stomach twist.
"At the hospital."
Diane had worked there.
Not as a nurse.
She worked in billing administration.
She had met Dad while helping him resolve paperwork after Mom's death.
Over time she began calling.
Then bringing food.
Then visiting.
Dad had believed it was kindness.
Maybe some of it had been.
But investigators were now interested.
Because Diane's name appeared in paperwork associated with my mother's personal effects.
Deputy Reed warned us not to leap to conclusions.
There was no evidence Diane had anything to do with Mom's death.
Mom had died from complications following a documented illness.
But the missing necklace mattered for another reason.
It was valuable.
Much more valuable than I knew.
The locket had belonged to my grandmother.
Inside was a small antique diamond.
Dad estimated its value at nearly $18,000.
Diane had known that.
Three days after the mower incident, detectives executed a search warrant.
They found the necklace.
Not in a jewelry box.
Not in a drawer.
It was hidden inside a locked metal cashbox in the garage.
Alongside it were documents.
Bank statements.
Insurance papers.
And photocopies of something that made Dad physically sick.
His will.
The legitimate will divided most of his estate between me and a trust for any grandchildren.
But beside it was another version.
Unsigned.
In that version, Diane inherited almost everything.
My name was absent.
So was Lily's.
"Did you authorize this?" Detective Mendoza asked Dad.
"No."
"Have you discussed changing your will?"
"Never."
The investigation expanded.
Then my lawyer, Sarah Klein, discovered something even more disturbing.
Two weeks before Lily and I moved into Dad's house, Diane had contacted an attorney.
She asked what happened if an adult stepchild living in a home died accidentally.
Specifically, she asked whether that stepchild's child could later make an inheritance claim.
The attorney apparently became uncomfortable and ended the consultation.
He kept notes.
When detectives showed Dad those notes, he walked outside and vomited.
I wanted to believe there was some innocent explanation.
But innocent explanations were disappearing one by one.
Still, the most important evidence remained the baby-monitor recording.
Forensic technicians recovered the original file and verified its timestamp.
They enhanced the audio.
There was no ambiguity.
My screams.
The mower.
Diane's voice.
And something else.
Just before she said the sentence about the blades, she whispered another sentence.
It had been too quiet for me to hear in the yard.
But the microphone had caught it.
The technician played it twice.
Then a third time.
Diane's voice came through the speaker:
"Once the baby is gone, she'll have no reason to stay."
Dad covered his face.
I couldn't move.
The room seemed to shrink around me.
Diane hadn't snapped.
She hadn't lost control.
She wanted Lily gone because she wanted me gone.
And according to the documents in that garage, removing us might have been worth a fortune.
But investigators still had one question.
If Diane had been planning to push me out of Dad's life for years, why had she suddenly become desperate enough to risk everything now?
The answer arrived forty-eight hours later.
Dad's accountant called.
Someone had been quietly draining money from one of his retirement accounts.
May you like
And every transfer led back to Diane.
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