Chapter 7 - Lauren Says It Was Research
Lauren denied planning anything.
“I was researching.”
Ethan laughed bitterly.
“My mother’s death?”
“No!”
“Then what?”
Lauren looked at Margaret.
“I wanted to understand the trust.”
“You told me you didn’t know it existed.”
Lauren froze.
Ethan stared.
There it was.
The lie nobody could explain away.
Margaret stepped back from the door.
“You knew.”
Lauren’s voice became small.
“Jason found references to it.”
“When?”
“Last year.”
Ethan’s stomach turned.
“And you never told me.”
“I was scared.”
“Of what?”
“That your mother would use it to control us.”
Margaret shook her head.
“I never mentioned the trust.”
“That made it worse.”
Lauren’s frustration spilled out.
“You controlled everything without saying it! This house, the family money, Ethan’s expectations—”
Margaret cut her off.
“This house was never your emergency fund.”
Lauren began crying.
Ethan wanted to feel sympathy.
He could not.
Then Robert asked the question that changed everything.
“Why did you ask the probate attorney whether Margaret’s cognitive capacity could affect trust administration?”
Lauren went silent.
Ethan turned slowly.
“What?”
Robert handed him an email.
Lauren’s email.
To the probate attorney.
If the lifetime beneficiary becomes mentally incompetent, can the successor beneficiary take possession before death?
Ethan read it twice.
Margaret’s voice stayed steady.
“Six weeks later, Lauren began telling relatives I was forgetting things.”
Lauren’s mouth opened.
“No.”
Ethan remembered.
Lauren saying Margaret repeated stories.
Lauren suggesting a neurological evaluation.
Lauren warning him that his mother should stop driving.
He had believed her.
Margaret looked at her son.
“That is why you are not coming inside today.”
Ethan’s face burned.
May you like
Because now the betrayal was not only Lauren’s.
He had helped her.
