Chapter 7 - SOPHIA TOLD A DIFFERENT STORY
Sophia called me forty-eight hours later.
Lucas had apparently told her not to.
That made me answer.
“Richard.”
Her voice sounded exhausted.
“What do you want?”
“To explain.”
“Explain the glue or the house?”
Silence.
“The house.”
“Start with the signature.”
“I never forged Clara’s signature.”
“You witnessed documents connected to it.”
“Lucas told me Clara had agreed.”
“Did you believe him?”
“At first.”
That phrase mattered.
“At first?”
Sophia began crying.
According to her, Lucas had told her Clara would eventually approve the house arrangement because I would persuade her.
Then, after Clara refused, he said his attorney had found another lawful structure that did not require direct consent at that stage.
Sophia wanted the new house badly.
She had already chosen finishes.
Kitchen stone.
Pool design.
Nursery layout.
Everything.
So she stopped asking questions that might threaten the answer she wanted.
“Why were you cruel to Clara?”
Sophia went silent.
“Why the chair?”
“She made a comment.”
“What comment?”
“At rehearsal dinner she said we were spending money like it grew on trees.”
I almost laughed.
“She wasn’t wrong.”
“I know that now.”
“No, Sophia. You knew that then.”
She cried harder.
I did not comfort her.
“Was the prank because you resented her refusing the house?”
Another long pause.
“Yes.”
There it was.
An eleven-dollar bottle of glue exposed a multimillion-dollar deception because Sophia wanted Clara punished for protecting her own property.
“Did Lucas forge the signature?”
“I never saw him do it.”
“Did you know it wasn’t Clara’s?”
“I knew she hadn’t signed in front of me.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
Her voice dropped.
“I suspected.”
That was enough.
Not legally.
Humanly.
May you like
Sophia had not needed certainty to benefit from the lie.
She only needed enough ambiguity to keep choosing the life Lucas promised her.
