I pressed the pen to the paper and signed. But I deliberately used a false middle initial—an ‘A’ instead of an ‘E’—and altered the slant of my surname, exactly as Detective Ortiz and the district attorney had instructed me during a clandestine meeting the night before.

The document was legally useless, an easily proven forgery, but Arthur snatched it up with greedy satisfaction.

An hour later, his mistress made her grand entrance.

Vanessa Cole had been my mother’s closest confidante for fifteen years. They’d played tennis together, co-chaired charity galas, and shared secrets over expensive wine.

She swept into my hospital room cloaked in black cashmere, a walking tragedy. Her heavy, suffocating perfume entered the room seconds before her sympathy did.

“Oh, Ellen, you poor, broken thing,” she sighed dramatically, reaching out to delicately touch my bandaged arm with perfectly manicured acrylic nails.