Chapter 2: Whose Name Was on the Deed
For a moment, nobody answered Daniel.
Officer Reed looked at the document on my phone, then at him.
“That’s a serious allegation,” she said. “What makes you believe it’s forged?”
“Because my aunt owns this place.”
Vivian nodded so quickly it looked painful.
“Margaret would have told me if she sold it.”
“Those aren’t the same thing,” Officer Reed said.
Daniel opened his mouth again, but Reed raised a hand.
“You’ve given us your account. Please stay with my partner while I speak with Claire.”
Her partner guided Daniel back toward the kitchen. He went, though he kept turning his head to watch me. The distance between us was only a few yards. With Reed standing there, it was enough for me to take a full breath—until the pain stopped it halfway.
Alex, the paramedic beside me, noticed.
“We need to get you checked at the hospital.”
“I will.” I held up my phone. “Can I make one call first? Margaret can tell you herself.”
Officer Reed considered it.
“You can call her. I may ask to speak with her, if she’s willing.”
I found Margaret’s number. My thumb hovered over it longer than it should have.
When she sold me the apartment eight months earlier, she had respected my request to keep the sale private. I had thanked her for that. Now I was calling because privacy had become one more thing Daniel could use against me.
She answered on the fourth ring, her voice thick with sleep.
“Claire? Is everything all right?”
“No.”
The word came out smaller than I intended. I swallowed and tried again.
“Daniel hit me. The police are here. He says the deed is fake.”
There was a sharp sound on her end, as though she had set something down.
“Are you getting help?”
“The paramedics are here.”
“Good. Tell me what you need.”
I looked at Reed.
“Would you speak to the officer?”
Margaret agreed. I put the call on speaker and introduced them. Reed asked Margaret to state her name and explain what she knew about the apartment. She did not rush. She said she had sold it to me eight months ago, that we had completed the sale through a closing office, and that the deed had been recorded under my maiden name.
“Do you have records of that transaction?” Reed asked.
“Yes. My copy of the closing papers, the name of the office, and the payment records. Claire should have her copies too. The deed can be checked through the county’s property records.”
I did have copies. They were in the email open on my phone, and the originals were in a folder in my desk. For the first time since Daniel called the deed a forgery, I remembered that the papers existed in more than one place.
Vivian stepped closer despite Reed’s request that she give us room.
“Margaret?”
My aunt-by-marriage went quiet.
“You sold it to Claire?” Vivian asked.
“Yes.”
“You let us go on believing it was yours?”
Margaret’s reply was steady.
“I told you Daniel and Claire had a place to live. I didn’t tell you who owned it because it wasn’t mine to tell.”
Vivian stared at the phone as if she could make her sister take back the words.
Daniel had heard enough to come forward, with the other officer just behind him.
“She’s confused,” he said. “Claire’s put her up to this.”
“Daniel,” Margaret said, “I know what I signed.”
Reed ended the call after getting Margaret’s permission to contact her again. Then she turned to Daniel.
“We’ll check the records independently. That’s separate from why we came tonight.”
“Why you came?” he said. “She called because she lost her temper.”
Alex shifted beside me. He had been patient while I made the call, but he was watching how carefully I held myself. Reed asked if I could tell her once more, without Daniel interrupting, what had happened between the chair and the floor.
I looked at the table.
The white cloth still hung crookedly over its edge. Wine had soaked through it in a dark, uneven patch. My broken plate lay where it had landed beside the spot where I’d fallen.
“I was sitting there,” I said, pointing. “Daniel came around the table after I told him Vanessa couldn’t stay here on weekends. He leaned over me. I wouldn’t apologize. He slapped me, and I hit the edge of the table before I fell.”
Reed followed the path I indicated. She asked which cheek he had struck and where the table had caught me. I touched my face, then stopped short of touching my ribs.
She looked at the redness on my cheek. Alex told her what I had reported about my chest pain and breathing. Nobody said what an X-ray would show; I hadn’t had one yet.
Across the room, the other officer spoke to Daniel again. I could hear pieces of his answer.
“She got up too fast.”
“She knocked things over.”
“I never hit her.”
Reed went over to him. I watched her point to the chair, then to the table. Daniel gestured toward my broken plate, but not toward the side of the table I had hit. She asked him another question I couldn’t hear. This time he looked at me before answering.
I had spent years trying to anticipate that look. It meant I was supposed to help him find a version of events we could both live with. When I didn’t, he looked away first.
Alex crouched so I could see him without turning my head.
“Claire, I’d like to help you stand. We’ll go slowly, and if it hurts too much, tell me.”
“It already hurts.”
“I know. You still get to tell me when to stop.”
He offered his arm. I took it. The movement brought a hot, sickening pain through my side, and I had to stand still until it eased enough to breathe.
From that height, I could see the room more clearly. The chair Daniel had pushed back from dinner sat near the table. My handbag was still by the entrance where Vivian had thrown it.
Vivian followed my gaze.
“I was upset,” she said. “I didn’t know she was injured.”
I remembered her laugh while I was on the floor. She had seen me struggle to breathe.
I didn’t answer her. I didn’t have the breath to argue over what she knew.
Reed returned with her partner.
“Claire, my partner is going to take photographs of what’s visible here, if you agree. He’ll also ask for your contact information so we can follow up.”
I agreed. He photographed my cheek and the dinner setting while I stood beside Alex. He asked before each picture. It was an ordinary courtesy, but I was so unused to being asked anything in my own home that I nearly cried.
Daniel watched from the kitchen doorway.
“So she shows you some pictures on a phone and I’m the criminal?” he said.
“No,” Reed answered. “We’re looking at what each of you has told us and what we can observe.”
She spoke with her partner briefly, out of my hearing. When they came back, Reed addressed Daniel.
“Daniel Whitmore, you’re being taken into custody on an assault allegation.”
He laughed once, without humor.
“You can’t be serious.”
Her partner moved toward him. Daniel did not resist, but he kept talking while the officer secured his hands behind his back.
“She’s my wife. Ask her why she hid the apartment from me. Ask her what else she’s lied about.”
His words reached me even though I was trying to listen to Alex explain the trip downstairs. I had no idea what Daniel might say tomorrow, or what anyone would believe months from now. I knew only what I had told the officers tonight.
As they led him toward the door, he stopped beside my handbag.
“Claire.”
I looked up.
“You’re really going to let them do this?”
He sounded almost bewildered. For a second I saw the man I had once waited up for, the man who could make an apology sound like a promise. Then I felt the pain in my chest when I breathed.
“I called them,” I said.
The officer led him into the hall.
Vivian started after him, but Reed asked her to stay. She wanted Vivian’s contact information and her account of what she had seen. Vivian gave her name and number, then said she had been at the table when I fell.
“You saw me fall?” I asked.
“I saw you on the floor.”
“That’s different.”
She pressed her lips together. Reed wrote down the exchange.
When the questions were finished, Vivian asked if she could go with Daniel. Reed said the officers would tell her where he was being taken once they had that information, but she could not ride with them. Vivian looked toward the open doorway. I had never seen her unsure which side of a room she was allowed to stand on.
I didn’t feel triumphant. My chest hurt, I needed a hospital, and Daniel’s arrest had not settled who could enter the apartment later. I asked Reed what would happen to his things.
“We can document your concern,” she said. “I can’t promise you tonight how access will be handled going forward. Ask the hospital staff about speaking with an advocate, and keep the incident number we give you.”
It wasn’t the answer I wanted. It was an answer I could trust.
May you like
Alex brought the stretcher to the doorway. I reached for my handbag, and he picked it up for me. My phone was still in my hand. Margaret’s number was still on the screen, ready if I needed to call back.
Vivian stood near the little brass hook beside the door. I had left a spare apartment key there that morning. As Alex turned the stretcher to clear the doorway, I saw Vivian lift the key from its hook and slip it into her coat.
