Chapter 2: The Hatbox
I did not return to the house until the hospital confirmed my mother was stable and under observation for the night. Rosa had been admitted for monitoring after the stitches; I stopped at her room long enough to thank her and to tell her that nothing she had done would cost her the job or her safety. She only nodded, eyes already heavy with pain medication, and asked me again to open the green hatbox before Celeste could reach it.
Two officers from the local department met me at the property after I provided a preliminary statement and the first stills from the security archive. They waited while I unlocked the master suite and the guest rooms, then followed me upstairs to my mother’s wardrobe.
The green velvet hatbox sat exactly where Rosa had said it would.
Inside, arranged with Celeste’s usual precision, were the bank statements, the property documents, the credit cards still in their sleeves, and the pages of signature practice—my mother’s name repeated in uneven ink until the forgeries began to look almost natural. Beneath them lay a thin folder of correspondence with a title company and a private lender. The dates aligned with the period I had been in Perth.
One of the officers photographed everything in place before anything was moved. The other bagged the contents for evidence once I confirmed the items matched what the footage had already shown. Celeste’s phone, when they requested it, was password-locked; she declined to unlock it without an attorney present. That refusal was noted.
She stood in the foyer while the collection proceeded, composed again, the earlier fear carefully sealed away.
“You’re destroying this family over a misunderstanding and a caregiver’s word,” she said.
May you like
I did not answer her. The cameras had already answered.
When the officers left with the hatbox and the preliminary copies of the relevant footage, I changed the exterior codes, disabled the secondary access fobs she carried, and booked a short-term suite near the hospital. I would not sleep under the same roof as her again.
