Chapter 6 - The Second Phone
Linda reached the staircase before Edward caught her arm.
“Let go of me.”
“Not until we talk.”
“You are hurting me.”
He released her immediately.
She ran upstairs.
Gabriella called Officer Bennett while I followed as quickly as my knees allowed. Edward reached the guest room first.
Linda had locked the door.
“Open it,” he said.
“No.”
“Linda.”
“You all want to search through my private life.”
“I want to know why our son says you have a secret phone.”
“It’s an old phone.”
“Then open the door.”
A drawer slammed inside.
Gabriella came up behind us.
“Do not force entry,” she said. “The police are returning.”
“This is my mother’s house.”
“And forcing the door while your wife is inside could create unnecessary complications.”
We heard the window open.
Sarah ran to the back bedroom and looked outside.
“She’s climbing onto the porch roof.”
Edward hurried down the stairs and out the back door.
By the time we reached the yard, Linda stood on the low porch roof with one hand gripping the window frame. She wore narrow heels and had no coat.
“What are you doing?” Edward shouted.
“Stay back.”
“You’re going to fall.”
“Then maybe you’ll all be happy.”
Dylan began sobbing.
I pulled him against me.
“Linda,” I called, “come inside.”
She laughed.
“Now you care?”
“I care that my grandchildren should not watch their mother get hurt.”
Sarah took out her phone.
“I’m calling 911.”
“Put that down!” Linda screamed.
A police siren sounded in the distance.
Linda looked toward the alley.
In her free hand, she held a small black phone.
She raised it above the gutter.
Gabriella understood.
“Do not throw it.”
Linda looked directly at her and released it.
The phone struck the edge of the porch, bounced into the yard, and landed in a patch of wet grass.
Edward ran toward it.
Linda attempted to climb back through the window, but her heel slipped.
For one terrifying second, her body tilted backward.
Edward dropped the phone and reached up.
He caught her leg as she grabbed the window frame. Gabriella and I could do nothing but watch while he steadied her.
Linda pulled herself inside.
When Officer Bennett arrived, she was sitting on the guest-room floor, barefoot and furious.
The second phone remained intact.
Its screen was locked, but Gabriella advised Edward not to attempt access. Officer Bennett placed it in an evidence bag after Linda claimed it belonged to her and accused us of stealing it.
“You threw it into Mrs. Hale’s yard,” he said.
“It slipped.”
“From the porch roof?”
She looked away.
Officer Bennett asked whether she wanted medical attention.
She refused.
Then he separated us again.
This time, Edward gave a full statement about the loan, the destroyed phone, and the attempted destruction of the second device.
Linda accused him of domestic abuse.
She showed Officer Bennett a red mark on her arm where Edward had briefly caught her.
Edward immediately admitted touching her.
“I stopped her from running upstairs,” he said. “I released her as soon as she told me to.”
Officer Bennett documented everything.
No one was arrested that morning.
But the family could no longer pretend this was a misunderstanding.
Gabriella arranged for a hotel suite for Sarah and Dylan using money from an education support account that Linda could not access. Edward went with them.
Linda refused to leave.
She said she had nowhere to go and claimed legal residency because she had brought personal property into the home.
Gabriella explained that the formal process would continue.
Until then, I remained in the house with Linda.
Ruth Bennett, my closest friend and Officer Bennett’s aunt, moved into the downstairs guest room that afternoon.
Linda hated that.
Ruth was seventy-one, five feet three inches tall, and afraid of almost nothing. She had spent thirty-eight years as a public-school principal and could silence a room by removing her glasses.
When Linda objected, Ruth looked around my kitchen.
“I was invited by the homeowner.”
Then she made tea.
For two days, the house became a cold battlefield.
Linda remained upstairs.
She ordered food, made private calls from a replacement phone, and left only when accompanied by Melissa. She did not speak to me directly.
Edward visited the children at the hotel and met with an attorney Gabriella recommended.
Sarah called me every evening.
Dylan asked whether he could come home.
The word home nearly broke me.
On the third morning, Northbridge provided Edward’s attorney with the electronic signature audit.
The loan documents had been sent to an email address nearly identical to Edward’s real address.
His actual address ended in “72.”
The loan email ended in “27.”
The phone number used for identity verification belonged to a prepaid device.
The second phone.
The identity photograph submitted during the application was Edward’s driver’s-license picture, copied from a family insurance folder.
The lender had not verified him properly.
But someone had answered security questions correctly.
His mother’s maiden name.
His first car.
The street where he grew up.
Linda knew all of them.
There was also a notarized letter supposedly signed by me.
It declared that I intended to transfer the house to Edward and Linda within six months.
My signature looked convincing.
But the notary seal belonged to Melissa.
Linda’s sister was a licensed notary.
Gabriella brought me the copy.
I recognized the source of the signature immediately.
“It’s from Anthony’s hospital release form.”
“How can you tell?” she asked.
“Because the pen skipped in the M. I signed on a clipboard balanced on my knees.”
The original form had been stored in the blue folder.
Linda had photographed the signature during her search.
But the loan application was submitted months before she took the folder from my desk.
That meant she had accessed it earlier.
I checked the old camera recordings.
The system stored clips for only sixty days.
We had no proof of an earlier search.
Then Ruth remembered something.
“Last Easter,” she said, “Linda volunteered to clean your den after lunch.”
I pictured the day.
Sarah and Dylan hunted plastic eggs in the yard. Edward helped me carry dishes. Linda disappeared for nearly twenty minutes.
At the time, I had been grateful.
Now I felt sick.
That afternoon, Edward came to the house without Linda.
He looked ten years older.
“I filed a fraud affidavit with Northbridge,” he said. “My attorney says the criminal investigation could involve Linda and Melissa.”
I poured coffee.
“Are you prepared for that?”
“I don’t know.”
“That is not the same as no.”
He sat at the kitchen table.
“I keep remembering small things.”
“What things?”
“Bills she wouldn’t let me see. Credit cards she said were closed. Calls she took outside. Every time I asked, she said I didn’t trust her.”
“Did you?”
“No.”
The honesty was painful.
“But I wanted to.”
Ruth left us alone.
Edward looked at Anthony’s empty chair.
“Dad warned me once.”
“When?”
“Before he died. He asked whether Linda ever used the kids to end arguments.”
I waited.
“I got angry. I said he was judging my marriage.”
“What did he say?”
“He said a person doesn’t need to be perfect to love you, but they should not require you to become smaller.”
That sounded like Anthony.
Edward’s eyes filled.
“I became smaller.”
“Yes.”
He looked at me, perhaps expecting reassurance.
I gave him truth instead.
“But you can become larger again.”
He nodded.
His phone rang.
Linda.
He let it ring.
A message appeared.
He read it and went pale.
“What?”
He handed me the phone.
The message contained a photograph of Sarah sitting outside her school.
It had been taken that morning.
Beneath it, Linda had written:
Tell your mother to release the trust money, or I will take my children somewhere none of you can find us.
May you like
Another message arrived.
You have until five.
