Sharon met us that afternoon. She wasn’t my divorce lawyer; she’d become something closer to a guardian of my boundaries. She sat at my dining table with a stack of documents and said, “Margaret’s criminal case is the loud part. The quiet part is what she set in motion legally before she got caught.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
Sharon slid a folder toward me. Inside were copies of paperwork Margaret had filed while still married to me.
A will update request, unsigned but drafted.
A beneficiary change form for a small policy I’d forgotten existed.
A power of attorney template with my name typed neatly at the top and a signature line that made my skin crawl.
“She was preparing,” Sharon said, voice flat. “Not just to kill you. To control the aftermath.”
Catherine’s hand clenched on her coffee mug. “Can she do anything from prison?”
“She can try,” Sharon replied. “But we’re going to block every route.”
It turned out the Fairmont wasn’t the only place Margaret had staged a performance. She’d also staged a paper trail, one designed to make her look like the grieving widow even before I became one.