Chapter 5 - Uncovering the Ledger
Three days after Thanksgiving, Lauren and I sat at the kitchen table in our own house, surrounded by financial statements, bank notices, and photocopies of the family trust documents that Chris had managed to smuggle out of his mother's house. Ethan was upstairs playing quietly with his Lego sets, his nightmares from the night of the incident finally starting to subside.
"Look at this," Lauren said, sliding a bank statement across the wood grain. "Megan wasn't just trying to get the house. She was drowning in debt."
I leaned in, examining the rows of numbers. Maxed-out credit cards, payday loans with staggering interest rates, and a foreclosure notice on the suburban home Megan and Chris had bought two years ago. "Chris had no idea?"
"Chris is an optimist who refuses to look at bills until the electricity gets shut off," Lauren replied grimly. "Megan handled all the finances. And according to these emails I pulled from Chris's shared cloud account, she had been pressuring your mother to change the deed to sole survivorship for Chris—meaning if you died, and something happened to your mother, Chris would inherit everything, and Megan would control it all."
"She was going to kill my whole family for a bail-out," I murmured, rubbing my temples as a dull headache throbbed behind my eyes.
"Not just your family," a voice said from the doorway.
We looked up. Chris stood there, holding a cardboard box containing his personal belongings from the house he had shared with Megan. His eyes were red-rimmed, his shoulders slumped under a heavy winter coat. He looked ten years older than he had a week ago.
"May I come in?" he asked quietly.
"Of course, Chris," Lauren said immediately, getting up to make room at the table and pouring him a cup of black coffee.
Chris sat down heavily, staring into the dark liquid. "She confessed to the detectives this morning. Well, she didn't confess—she tried to pin it all on me. Told them I bought the poison and forced her to put it on the plate." He let out a harsh, humorless laugh. "The police checked toll road cameras, agricultural supply logs, and text messages. Her phone records show she searched 'fast-acting agricultural neurotoxins Cedar Rapids' three days before Thanksgiving."
"Are you okay, Chris?" I asked, putting a hand on his shoulder.
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"I feel sick," he said, looking up at me with tears in his eyes. "I brought a monster into our family, Daniel. And I was too blind, or too lazy, to see what she was doing right in front of my face. Mom is inconsolable. She keeps saying she wants to sell the house and move into a senior community. She doesn't even want to look at the dining room."
"We'll help her," Lauren said gently. "We're all going to get through this. But first, we make sure Megan never sees a dime of your family's legacy."
