I drove to Tyler’s house the next morning.
Not because Jessica invited me.
Because after she admitted seeing something, I refused to wait for another carefully managed explanation.
She opened the door wearing exercise clothes, her hair pulled into a loose knot.
Her expression tightened when she saw me.
“Tyler isn’t here.”
“I came to see you.”
“I have things to do.”
“So do I.”
She folded her arms.
“I don’t want to be in the middle of this.”
“You called me.”
“That was a mistake.”
“You said you saw something.”
Jessica looked past me toward the street.
“Come inside.”
The house smelled different.
No coffee.
No breakfast cooking.
A pile of grocery bags sat on the counter.
Barbara’s voice came from the family room.
“Who is it?”
Jessica called back, “Nobody.”
Then she led me upstairs.
Into the bedroom that had been mine.
It looked smaller empty.
A folding table now stood against one wall, covered with Tyler’s business files.
I noticed that immediately.
“What is all this?”
“Tyler’s been working up here.”
“Since I left?”
“Yes.”
That interested me.
Jessica opened the closet.
From the top shelf, she removed a large envelope.
“What is it?”
She didn’t answer.
Instead, she handed me a photocopy.
It appeared to be a letter from William.
Typed.
Signed.
My heart began pounding before I finished the first paragraph.
The letter said that William intended Tyler to retain full control of the landscaping company.
It said the original investment had served its purpose.
It said William did not want me burdened by company ownership after his death.
And near the bottom, one sentence stated that any unresolved ownership interest should be transferred to Tyler for nominal consideration.
I read it twice.
Then I looked at the signature.
William Mercer.
It looked like his.
Very much like his.
Jessica watched my face.
“Now do you understand?”
I kept reading.
“Where did this come from?”
“Tyler found it after William died.”
“Where?”
“In some papers.”
“What papers?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why wasn’t it given to Marcus?”
“Tyler said it wasn’t necessary.”
I looked up.
“A letter affecting hundreds of thousands of dollars wasn’t necessary?”
“It wasn’t a legal contract.”
“Then why are you showing it to me as proof?”
Jessica’s mouth tightened.
“Because you keep acting like Tyler stole something.”
“I’m asking questions.”
“You hired a lawyer.”
“I called the lawyer who handled my husband’s estate.”
“Same thing.”
“No.”
She pointed at the letter.
“William clearly didn’t want you involved.”
I looked down again.
It was persuasive.
Painfully persuasive.
The language sounded formal, but William could be formal when discussing money.
The signature looked right.
For one terrible moment, I wondered whether I had misunderstood everything.
Perhaps William really had intended Tyler to receive the company.
Perhaps Tyler had simply handled it badly.
Perhaps my suspicion had outrun the facts.
Then I noticed the date.
March 18.
I read it again.
March 18.
“What year is this?”
Jessica frowned.
“You can see it.”
I could.
That was the problem.
March 18 of the year William died.
I knew where William had been that day.
The memory came with absolute clarity.
St. David’s Medical Center.
Cardiac unit.
He had undergone a procedure the day before.
I had spent March 18 beside him from early morning until nearly midnight.
William had been weak, heavily medicated, and unable to sit upright for more than a few minutes.
I remembered because it was also the day Tyler brought him soup and William spilled half of it on his hospital blanket.
I read the letter again.
It was three pages long.
Detailed.
Carefully drafted.
Typed.
Dated that day.
“Where was this supposedly written?”
Jessica blinked.
“What?”
“Where did William write it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did Tyler say?”
“No.”
“Did he email it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Was there an original?”
“I assume so.”
“You assume.”
Jessica became defensive.
“What are you getting at?”
“William was in the hospital on March eighteenth.”
“So?”
“So I was with him all day.”
“He could have written it before.”
“Then why date it the eighteenth?”
“I don’t know.”
“Neither do I.”
She reached for the copy.
I kept holding it.
“Give it back.”
“I need a photograph.”
“No.”
“Jessica.”
“No. I already regret showing you.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re doing exactly what Tyler said you’d do.”
“What did Tyler say?”
“That you’d turn Dad’s death into some kind of investigation.”
The words hurt.
Not because Jessica said them.
Because Tyler had prepared her to see any question I asked as an attack.
I handed the paper back.
Then I took out my phone.
“I already photographed it.”
Her face changed.
“You had no right.”
“I absolutely did.”
She stepped toward me.
“Delete it.”
“No.”
“Eleanor.”
“If this letter is genuine, the photograph hurts nobody.”
Jessica stopped.
That logic landed.
“If it isn’t,” I continued, “then the photograph matters.”
Her eyes narrowed.
“You think Tyler forged his father’s signature?”
“I think the date doesn’t make sense.”
“You’ve lost perspective.”
“Maybe.”
I turned toward the door.
Then something else on the folding table caught my eye.
A bank statement.
I didn’t touch it.
But one transaction was circled in red.
$47,500.
Transfer received.
The date was less than three months after William died.
I looked at Jessica.
“What is that?”
She moved quickly and covered the page.
“Nothing.”
“Forty-seven thousand dollars isn’t nothing.”
“That’s business money.”
“From whom?”
“You need to leave.”
I stepped back.
“Was it from the company?”
“I said leave.”
Barbara appeared in the doorway.
“What’s going on?”
“Nothing,” Jessica snapped.
Barbara looked at me.
“You’re upsetting her.”
“I’m leaving.”
As I reached the stairs, Tyler entered through the front door.
He stopped when he saw me.
“What are you doing here?”
“Talking to Jessica.”
His eyes moved toward the upstairs hall.
Then back to me.
“What did she show you?”
He asked too quickly.
Jessica appeared behind me.
“Tyler—”
His face changed.
“What did you show her?”
“The letter.”
He swore.
Barbara looked scandalized.
“What letter?”
“Nobody asked you,” Tyler said.
The room went silent.
Barbara’s face hardened.
I had never heard him speak to her that way.
Tyler looked at me.
“You had no right to come here interrogating my wife.”
“She called me.”
Jessica snapped, “Because I was trying to stop this.”
Tyler rubbed his forehead.
“Mom, please.”
“Where did the letter come from?”
He froze.
“What letter?”
“The one dated March eighteenth.”
His expression changed again.
Not much.
Enough.
“You know which one.”
He looked at Jessica.
“Why would you show her that?”
“Because I thought it would end this.”
I said, “Where did it come from?”
Tyler turned back to me.
“Dad wrote it.”
“Where?”
“What do you mean?”
“Where was he when he wrote it?”
“I don’t remember.”
“He was in the hospital.”
“So?”
“So I was with him.”
“He wrote things when you weren’t there.”
“Not that day.”
“You went home.”
“At eleven-thirty that night.”
Tyler said nothing.
I continued.
“He was sedated for much of the afternoon.”
“That doesn’t mean—”
“He could barely hold a spoon.”
“Mom.”
“He did not sit up and type three pages about corporate ownership.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Yes, I do.”
Jessica was staring at him now.
The confidence she had shown upstairs was gone.
“Tyler,” she said quietly, “you told me he wrote that at home.”
Tyler turned toward her.
“I said he wrote it around then.”
“No. You said at home.”
“This was years ago.”
She shook her head.
“You said he gave it to you before he went back to the hospital.”
Tyler’s face reddened.
Barbara stepped backward.
I looked from Jessica to my son.
“Was there an original?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“With my attorney.”
“What attorney?”
“Business counsel.”
“Name.”
“I don’t have to give you that.”
“Then Marcus can request it.”
Tyler came closer.
“Stop bringing Marcus into everything.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re making this worse.”
“For whom?”
He didn’t answer.
I thought about the circled transaction upstairs.
“Who sent you forty-seven thousand five hundred dollars after William died?”
Tyler’s face went still.
Jessica turned.
“How do you know about that?”
“I saw the statement.”
Tyler glared at his wife.
“You left bank records out?”
“I didn’t know she was coming.”
I said, “Who sent it?”
“It was company revenue.”
“From a customer?”
“Yes.”
“Which customer?”
“I don’t remember.”
“A payment that large?”
“We have large jobs.”
“Then it should be easy to document.”
Tyler stepped toward me.
“Get out.”
His voice was low.
Not shouted.
That made it more serious.
I looked at him.
My son.
A man whose diapers I had changed.
Whose forehead I had cooled during childhood fevers.
Whose first apartment I had stocked with groceries because he was too proud to admit he was broke.
And now I barely recognized the expression on his face.
“All right.”
I walked toward the door.
Behind me, Jessica said, “Tyler, was that letter really from William?”
He didn’t answer.
I stopped.
Didn’t turn.
Waited.
Jessica asked again.
“Was it?”
Tyler finally said, “Yes.”
But he said it too late.
The doubt had already entered the room.
Outside, I sat in my car and photographed the notes I remembered from the conversation.
Then I called Marcus.
“I found another document.”
“What kind?”
“A letter supposedly from William.”
“What does it say?”
I explained.
Marcus interrupted only once.
“What date?”
“March eighteenth.”
Silence.
Then: “That’s interesting.”
“He was hospitalized.”
“I remember.”
“Could the letter still be valid?”
“Possibly.”
“How?”
“He could have prepared it earlier and dated it later. He could have dictated it. Someone else could have typed it.”
“Wouldn’t there be metadata?”
“If we get the electronic file.”
“What if Tyler only has paper?”
“Then we examine the paper.”
“And the signature?”
“We can authenticate it.”
I told him about the $47,500 transfer.
“That matters,” Marcus said.
“Why?”
“Because that amount is close to something in Samuel’s records.”
My heartbeat increased.
“What?”
“A quarterly distribution estimate.”
“For William’s share?”
“For the original twenty-five-percent share.”
I gripped the steering wheel.
“How close?”
“Almost exact.”
I looked back toward Tyler’s house.
“So money entered Tyler’s account after William died that might have been partly mine.”
“Possibly.”
“Or entirely?”
“That depends on what the payment represented.”
I remembered Tyler telling me the business had been struggling.
Remembered the twenty thousand dollars I gave him.
Remembered paying rent while buying groceries for the household.
“How much money might he have received after William died?”
“We don’t know.”
“I’m getting tired of that answer.”
“So am I.”
Marcus paused.
“Eleanor, I think it’s time to send a formal demand for the company records.”
I watched Tyler’s front door.
Part of me wanted to protect him.
That instinct was still alive.
Maybe it always would be.
But protection did not mean pretending not to see.
“Send it.”
“You understand this will escalate things.”
“They’re already escalated.”
“All right.”
“And Marcus?”
“Yes?”
“Include the original letter.”
“What do you mean?”
“Demand that Tyler produce the original copy of whatever William supposedly signed.”
“I will.”
I ended the call.
Twenty minutes later, as I drove home, my phone began ringing.
Tyler.
I ignored it.
Then Jessica.
I ignored that too.
Then Tyler again.
Finally a text arrived.
Do not send legal demands to my company.
Another followed.
You have no idea what you’re doing.
Then the third:
If you force me to open the books, this won’t just hurt me.
I pulled into a parking lot and read the message again.
Not just me.
I typed back.
Who else will it hurt?
For several minutes, there was no answer.
Then Tyler replied with a name I had never expected to see.
Barbara.
Click here to continue reading: PART 9: Barbara’s Name Appeared Where It Never Should Have Been, and Jessica Finally Realized Her Mother Had Been Keeping Secrets Too
The Morning I Realized My Son Saw Me as Income Instead of the Mother Who Had Always Rescued Him
Part 8 of 47
