Chapter 3 - The Toast in the Parlor
"You just couldn't sit at the end of the table and eat your dinner like a good girl, could you, Maggie?" Daniel asked softly, leaning his shoulders against the locked study door and sliding both hands into his trouser pockets.
My heart hammered against my ribs, and my daughter gave another sharp kick beneath my palm, yet I forced my voice to remain as steady as steel as I held the yellow psychiatric petition up between us.
"You forged Rosemary's medical records and paid a clinic doctor to say I am psychotic so you could steal my baby and turn your dead father's house into a hotel?" I asked, staring at the man I had spent eleven years building a life around.
Daniel didn't even flinch or pretend to be ashamed now that there was no audience watching him.
"My father left me a construction firm drowning in high-interest debt while Mom sits down there on forty acres of prime riverfront real estate worth thirty million dollars once it's rezoned," Daniel said coldly, taking two slow steps across the rug toward me.
"I gave you eleven years of a comfortable suburban life, Maggie, and if you keep your mouth shut downstairs tonight and sign the voluntary custody and property settlement tomorrow, I will leave you two hundred thousand dollars so you can move to Seattle without spending the next five years locked in a state psychiatric hospital."
While his eyes were fixed on the yellow folder in my left hand, he didn't notice that my right hand behind the edge of the mahogany desk had already slipped my phone—along with the three most damning pages from Jade's financial file—deep inside the hidden elastic maternity band of my skirt.
"Take the folder then, Daniel, because I won't fight a man who would lock his own mother in an asylum on Thanksgiving," I whispered, letting my shoulders slump in convincing, terrified defeat as I handed the yellow binder back to him.
Daniel smiled with the smug satisfaction of a bully who believed he had just broken his wife's spirit in under two minutes.
He tossed the binder back into the credenza, relocked the drawer, and took my elbow in a bruising grip to escort me back down the main staircase toward the parlor where coffee was waiting.
Down in the candlelit parlor, Rosemary was sitting in Harold’s high-backed leather wingchair beside the roaring fireplace while Jade stood near the bay window admiring the snowy gardens.
"Mom, before Maggie serves the pie, I brought out those updated trust tax protection forms from Harold’s lawyer so you can sign them tonight before the end-of-year deadline," Daniel announced warmly, picking up a leather portfolio from the side table and handing Rosemary a gold fountain pen.
Rosemary looked up at her only son over the rim of her reading glasses, then shifted her sharp gray eyes toward my pale face and the white mark Daniel’s fingers had left on my forearm.
"You want me to sign estate transfer papers before we have even cut the pumpkin pie, Daniel?" Rosemary asked quietly.
"It will take thirty seconds, Mom, and then none of us have to think about boring legal work for the rest of the holidays," Daniel urged, leaning over her chair while Jade watched eagerly from the window, believing she was watching the final obstacle to her boutique hotel disappear.
I walked slowly over to the silver coffee tray, picked up a linen napkin, and looked straight at Jade Prescott.
"Before Rosemary signs away Hollis Manor, Jade, I think you should see the Thanksgiving receipt I found folded inside the pantry ledger," I said clearly, stepping past Daniel before he could grab my arm and placing the three stolen financial sheets straight into Jade’s hands.
"Maggie, sit down right now!" Daniel barked, his face flushing dark red as he lunged across the rug to snatch the papers away.
Jade stepped back behind the wingchair out of his reach and looked down at the top page, her manicured fingers flying to her mouth as she read the certified marriage verification alongside the offshore Cayman transfer receipt showing Daniel had stolen one million dollars of her father's deposit yesterday afternoon to pay off an underground sports bookie in Atlantic City!
"You told my father and me that you were divorced two years ago and that this woman was a paid surrogate from an agency!" Jade shrieked, her polished composure shattering into pieces as she threw the second page down onto the coffee table—revealing a second mortgage Daniel had secretly forged against Jade’s own downtown penthouse!
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"Jade, listen to me, she printed those off to manipulate you!" Daniel shouted, grabbing Jade by the shoulders as Rosemary rose furiously from her wingchair to reach for the house telephone on the mantel.
Then, halfway to the fireplace mantel, sixty-eight-year-old Rosemary suddenly gasped for breath, clutched both hands tightly over the center of her chest, and collapsed face-first onto the Persian rug as her porcelain teacup shattered across the hearthstones—and as I dropped to my knees beside her and smelled the unmistakable bitter odor of crushed prescription beta-blockers rising from the spilled chamomile tea Daniel had poured for her ten minutes earlier, I realized my husband hadn't brought those papers down expecting his mother to survive the night!
