Chapter 3 - THE SIGNATURE I NEVER WROTE
"Don't touch the clock, Laura."
Rebecca's voice filled the bedroom.
Laura's hands dropped immediately.
I stared at the tiny red light.
My wife hadn't simply been monitoring my condition.
She had been watching me discover the truth.
"Rebecca," I said, forcing the words through my dry throat, "come upstairs."
"I'm already coming."
The speaker went silent.
Laura looked ready to collapse.
"Mr. Vance, I'm sorry."
"Listen to me. You didn't do anything wrong. Take that laboratory report and get it somewhere safe."
"What about you?"
"I've survived eighteen days. I can survive another conversation."
She hesitated.
Then she slipped through the dressing room just as Rebecca entered.
My wife was no longer wearing her coat.
Her hair was tied back, and her expression had changed.
She looked tired.
Almost ordinary.
"That camera was installed for your protection," she said.
"Protection from what?"
"Falls. Seizures. Anything that might happen when nobody's here."
"Then why didn't you tell me?"
She folded her arms.
"You would have argued."
"Did you watch Leo bring me the note?"
Her expression tightened.
"So that's what the little boy was doing."
I said nothing.
Rebecca approached the clock and turned off its speaker.
"Laura has been filling your head with nonsense."
"She thinks someone is poisoning me."
"Laura is frightened because she doesn't understand your condition."
"Neither do the doctors."
"Dr. Price understands more than you think."
"Then let me speak to him alone."
Rebecca looked away.
It was a small movement.
But I had spent fifteen years learning her expressions.
She was frightened.
Not of losing me.
Of what I might say.
"Gabriel," she began, "there are things happening with the company you haven't been well enough to understand."
"What things?"
"Daniel says the board is concerned."
"Daniel hasn't spoken to me in two weeks."
"Because you haven't been coherent enough."
I stared at her.
"Is that what you've been telling people?"
She didn't answer.
I pushed myself upright.
Pain shot through my abdomen, but I refused to lie down.
"I built Vance Technologies from a rented office with two folding desks. I know when somebody is trying to take it from me."
Rebecca's face hardened.
"And you know how to destroy everything else while you're building a company."
I went still.
She touched Lily's charm.
"Do you remember the night she died?"
"Rebecca."
"You promised you'd be there."
I closed my eyes.
Nine years earlier, I had left the hospital for an emergency board meeting.
The doctors had said Lily was stable.
They were wrong.
By the time I returned, our daughter was gone.
I had lived with that mistake every day since.
"I remember," I whispered.
"Then you remember what it feels like when someone makes a decision about your life without asking you."
She stepped closer.
"Daniel showed me the papers, Gabriel. You were going to remove me from the Lily Vance Children's Foundation."
"What papers?"
"And close Lily House."
Lily House was a respite center for children with serious medical conditions.
Rebecca had created it after our daughter died.
It was the one thing that had given her a reason to get out of bed during those terrible months.
"I never ordered Lily House closed."
"I saw your signature."
"Then somebody forged it."
Rebecca's eyes flashed.
"Of course. It's always somebody else's fault."
She turned toward the door.
"Dr. Price will decide whether you're able to make decisions tomorrow."
The implication was unmistakable.
They intended to declare me incompetent.
"Rebecca."
She stopped.
"Did you pay for my funeral?"
For several seconds, she didn't move.
Then she whispered, "I needed to be prepared."
She left without looking back.
I waited until her footsteps disappeared.
Then I pressed my face into the pillow and cried.
Not because I was frightened of dying.
Because the woman I had loved was standing somewhere in our home, waiting for it to happen.
An hour later, Laura returned.
She had removed the clock from the room after checking that Rebecca had gone downstairs.
"There's another camera in the hallway," she whispered. "I covered it with a cleaning cloth."
"Did you find out anything about the trust?"
She nodded.
"Mr. Vance, Mrs. Vance has a meeting scheduled for Monday morning."
"With whom?"
"Mr. Whitcomb and Mr. Kessler."
Miles Kessler was my chief financial officer.
I'd hired him seventeen years earlier.
He knew every account, every investment, every weakness in my company.
"What kind of meeting?"
"Something called an emergency stewardship review."
Monday was three days away.
The twenty-first day of my illness.
The number struck me.
I remembered Daniel explaining an emergency provision in the family trust.
If two physicians certified that I was incapable of managing my affairs, temporary voting authority could pass to designated trustees while the company reviewed my condition.
Daniel had insisted the provision was harmless.
I had believed him.
"Laura, I need to contact my sister."
She hesitated.
"Miss Claire?"
"Yes."
Claire Vance hadn't spoken to me in almost four years.
She had once managed our philanthropic accounts.
Then Daniel uncovered what he described as unauthorized transfers from one of our charitable programs.
I accused Claire of stealing.
She denied it.
We argued in my office for nearly two hours.
The last thing she said before leaving still haunted me.
One day, Gabriel, you'll discover that the person protecting you is the one stealing from you.
I told her never to come back.
Now I wondered whether I had thrown out the only person willing to tell me the truth.
Laura handed me an old prepaid phone.
"It's mine. Mrs. Vance doesn't know about it."
I remembered Claire's number.
My fingers shook so badly I pressed the wrong digits twice.
Finally, the call connected.
"Hello?"
Her voice was older than I remembered.
"Claire."
Silence.
Then:
"Gabriel?"
"I need your help."
She didn't answer immediately.
"Is this about money?"
"No."
"Because the last time we spoke, you told me I was a thief."
My throat tightened.
"I know."
"Have you finally figured out I wasn't?"
"I think I'm beginning to."
I told her about the pills, the laboratory report, and the cameras.
I expected disbelief.
Instead, Claire asked one question.
"Is Daniel Whitcomb still your attorney?"
"Yes."
She exhaled slowly.
"Then you're in more trouble than you realize."
For the next twenty minutes, Claire explained what she had uncovered after leaving the company.
Daniel had been quietly restructuring several holding companies.
Miles Kessler had approved unusual transfers.
And a private investment firm named Northbridge Equity had expressed interest in purchasing controlling assets of Vance Technologies.
"I tried to warn you," Claire said.
"I know."
"No, Gabriel. You don't know."
Her voice broke.
"I spent four years trying to prove I didn't steal from our mother's foundation. You wouldn't even look at what I found."
I swallowed hard.
"I'm looking now."
She promised to send Laura copies of the public filings she had collected.
Before hanging up, she asked whether I still had our father's silver watch.
"Rebecca took it."
"Get it back," Claire said. "Dad gave you that watch because he believed you would always do the right thing, even when it cost you."
Twenty minutes later, Laura's phone received several photographs.
Board notices.
Corporate registrations.
A proposed sale agreement.
I studied the final image.
My name appeared beneath a statement authorizing the transfer of controlling company assets to Northbridge Equity.
The document was dated for the coming Monday.
Three days in the future.
And beneath it was my signature.
Perfectly copied.
I stared at the screen.
Someone had prepared a document for me to sign on a day that hadn't happened yet.
Then I noticed the final line.
Authorization effective upon confirmation of permanent medical incapacity.
Laura read it over my shoulder.
"What does that mean?"
May you like
I looked toward the empty doorway.
"It means they aren't just waiting for me to die. They're preparing to prove I'm already beyond saving."
