Chapter 8 - Jenna Finally Talks
I met Jenna in the parking lot behind a twenty-four-hour pharmacy at 6:15 Friday evening.
She arrived in a baseball cap and no makeup, which told me more than any apology could have.
Jenna normally dressed like every grocery run might turn into a photo shoot.
That night she looked scared.
She got into my passenger seat and locked the door immediately.
"Tyler thinks I'm at Target," she said.
"You sent the deed photo?"
She nodded.
"Where did you find it?"
"Your dad told me about the blue folder after court."
"Dad told you?"
"He was shaking. He said he'd ruined everything."
Jenna stared through the windshield.
"Claire, I swear I didn't know they forged your name."
I believed half of that sentence.
"What did you know?"
She swallowed.
"I knew Tyler was trying to open the car wash. I knew your mom said the house would back the loan. I asked how, because your name is on it. Tyler said you had already agreed to help but wanted to keep it quiet until the financing closed."
"And that made sense to you?"
"No."
"But you didn't ask me."
She looked down.
"No."
"Why?"
"Because I wanted it to be true."
The honesty hurt more than a better excuse would have.
"Tyler has been telling me for two years that once the business opens, everything changes. We get our own place. We stop borrowing. We stop feeling like failures."
"So I was supposed to finance the fantasy."
"I didn't know it was without your permission."
"You knew enough not to ask."
She nodded, tears filling her eyes.
"Yeah."
I looked away.
For the first time, Jenna wasn't trying to make me comfort her.
That mattered.
"What else is in the folder?" I asked.
She handed me her phone.
Photos.
A fake quitclaim deed transferring my house to Mom.
A draft affidavit claiming Dad had contributed $92,000 in "equitable payments" after the transfer.
A printed email from Rita Voss discussing "backdating the witness page."
Then a document that made my skin go cold.
PETITION FOR TEMPORARY GUARDIANSHIP OF ADULT.
Prepared three weeks ago.
Three weeks before I had decided to sell.
"They planned the competency thing before the sale," I said.
"Tyler said your mom was worried you might move out and stop paying."
I laughed bitterly.
"So they planned to have me declared incompetent to stop me from leaving?"
Jenna's face folded.
"I don't know how far they meant to take it."
"Far enough to hire a doctor."
She nodded.
"There's more."
She swiped to another photo.
A handwritten page in Mom's looping script.
CLAIRE TALKING POINTS:
Forgets things after shifts.
Smells strongly of chemicals.
Irritable.
Sleeps odd hours.
Paranoid about money.
Doesn't socialize.
I stared at the list.
Every consequence of working twelve-hour night rotations while supporting six people had been converted into evidence that I could not control my own life.
"Why are you showing me this?"
Jenna took a shaky breath.
"Because Tyler came home from court and told me to pack the kids."
"Why?"
"He said if the sale goes through, he's taking cash out of the house before the buyer can get it."
"What cash?"
"Appliances. Copper. Tools. Anything he says you paid for with family money."
I turned toward her.
"Family money?"
"I know."
"The refrigerator is mine. The washer is mine. The furnace is mine."
"I know."
"And the buyer's contract includes the appliances."
"I know."
She wiped her eyes.
"That's why I came."
My phone rang.
Grace.
I answered.
"Claire, we have a problem."
"Another one?"
"Somebody just tried to record a quitclaim deed transferring your property to Marlene Dalton."
I looked at Jenna.
"They already have it."
"What?"
"Jenna photographed the forged deed."
Grace went silent for half a beat.
Then: "Get those photos to me now. The recorder rejected the filing because the notary block was defective, but whoever submitted it can try again."
I forwarded everything.
Grace called back almost immediately.
"The email about backdating is enough for me to contact the lender investigator and county counsel tonight."
"Will that stop them?"
"It may stop this version."
"This version?"
"Claire, people who are willing to forge one deed rarely stop because a clerk catches a formatting error."
Jenna made a small sound beside me.
I looked at her.
"What?"
She was staring at her phone.
"Tyler just texted me."
"What did he say?"
She turned the screen toward me.
Get home NOW. Dad told Claire about the folder. Mom says we need to clean the house before morning.
I read it twice.
"Clean the house," I said.
Jenna whispered, "He doesn't mean vacuuming."
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