Chapter 5 - MEGAN’S SIGNATURE
Megan arrived at the hospital the next morning.
She was still wearing part of her wedding hairstyle. Pins remained hidden beneath her loosened blond hair, and faint marks from the formal makeup curved around her eyes.
Her new husband, Andrew, waited in the hallway.
Megan stood at the foot of my bed.
“I thought you hated me.”
I blinked.
“What?”
“Mom said you had been trying to stop the wedding for months. She said you convinced Daniel the family was using him.”
Daniel placed the loan documents on the visitor table.
“Did you sign these?”
Megan looked at the pages.
“Those are the vendor-release papers.”
“No. They authorize a $640,000 loan.”
Her face emptied.
Linda had placed the signature page between routine wedding documents while Megan was approving final payments. She told her the form permitted the trust to release money James had reserved for both children’s weddings.
No such reserve existed.
Megan’s wedding had cost far more than she knew. Linda had hidden balances, used credit cards, and promised vendors payment from a family asset closing scheduled for the wedding night.
Megan sat down slowly.
“I told her I wanted something smaller.”
“I know,” Daniel said.
“She kept saying Dad would have wanted this.”
Linda had used James’s memory to pressure both children in opposite directions. Megan was told refusing the elaborate wedding would insult her father. Daniel was told refusing the loan would destroy his sister’s future.
I had been given a simpler role.
The selfish outsider interfering with a grieving family.
Megan covered her face.
“I was angry you went to the hospital. For maybe ten minutes, I was angry.”
“You were under pressure,” I said.
“No. That explains it. It doesn’t make it right.”
Then she looked at Daniel.
“Did Mom really try to touch Claire’s incision?”
He nodded.
Megan began crying.
Not loudly.
May you like
Not for the wedding photographs that had been missed.
For the first time, she saw that Linda’s need for control did not stop where love was supposed to begin.
