Anthony and Ariana, your son‑in‑law and your daughter‑in‑law. They’ve been involved for at least eight months, maybe longer.
But it’s worse than that.
They found out about the sale. I don’t know how. Maybe they hired someone to follow me. Maybe they have access to accounts I didn’t protect well enough. And they discovered the appraisal of your work. They know what it’s worth.
They’re planning to steal it.
The investigator documented everything.
They hired an art forger, a man named Anton Reeves, who specializes in mid‑century American painters. The plan is to replace your originals with expert copies, piece by piece, over time. Then they’ll sell the originals on the black market and split the money.
After I’m gone, they were going to convince you to move into assisted living, to downsize, to let them help manage your assets. You would have never known. The forgeries are that good.
I have proof, Callie—documentation, photographs, recordings. It’s all in a safe deposit box at Chase on 86th Street. Box number 2847. The key is taped inside the back cover of this journal.
Tomorrow, December 27th, I need you to go to the bank. Get the evidence. Look at it with your own eyes. Then you’ll understand why I’m doing this, why I sold my work, why I’ve arranged everything that comes next.
Don’t confront them yet. Please trust me just a little longer.
I love you. I’ve always loved you, and I’m going to make sure you’re taken care of, that you’re safe, that you can live the life we always dreamed about before age and obligation and other people’s expectations got in the way.
Read tomorrow’s entry after you’ve been to the bank.
Yours forever,
Austin.
The journal falls from my hands and lands on the table with a sound like a judge’s gavel.
I sit perfectly still, whiskey untouched, mind racing and blank simultaneously.
Anthony and Ariana. An affair.
My daughter’s husband and my son’s wife destroying two marriages for each other. Planning to rob me, to put me in a home, to steal the life’s work I poured into canvas after canvas in the studio Austin built for me forty years ago.
“No,” I whisper. “It can’t be.”
I reach for my phone and pull up the family photo from Thanksgiving just six weeks ago—a lifetime ago—when Austin was still alive but fading fast.
We’re all there. Me, supporting Austin, who looks thin and gray but is smiling. Brandon with his arm around Ariana, who’s looking at the camera with that serene expression she always wears. Lauren leaning into Anthony, his hand possessive on her shoulder.
Anthony and Ariana are on opposite ends of the frame, not even looking at each other.
But that proves nothing.
That’s how affairs work, isn’t it? Hidden in plain sight, camouflaged by normalcy.
I think back over the past months. Anthony’s sudden interest in coming to the house, “helping out” by going through Austin’s studio, asking if I’d had his work appraised. Ariana volunteering to organize our financial documents, suggesting we set up a trust, talking about the importance of protecting assets for the next generation.
Brandon and Lauren noticed nothing.
Or did they?
God. Do my children know?
No. I can’t believe that. Brandon and Lauren are good people. They love me. They wouldn’t—
—but they’ve been distant lately, both of them, busy with their own lives, their own marriages. Brandon traveling constantly for work. Lauren preoccupied with her charity boards and yoga retreats.
When was the last time either of them asked about my art, my life, anything beyond whether I was “managing okay” after Austin’s death?
The whiskey burns going down. I pour another.
The logical thing to do is call them right now. Confront this. Demand explanations.
But Austin said not to.
Austin said to wait, to get the evidence, to trust him.
And there’s something else, something beneath the shock and betrayal, something that feels almost like relief.
Because for months now, I’ve felt crazy. Like I was imagining things, being paranoid, letting grief warp my perception. The way Ariana looks at our paintings a little too long. The way Anthony takes photos of the studio “for memories.” The hushed conversations that stop when I appear. The way both of them have been pushing me to simplify my life, to make decisions quickly, to “let them help.”
I thought I was losing my mind.
But I wasn’t.
Austin saw it, too. Austin investigated and found proof, which means I’m not crazy. I’m not paranoid. I’m not a grief‑stricken old woman imagining conspiracies.
I’m a woman whose family is trying to rob her.
The apartment feels different now. Not empty, but full of eyes, full of threats, full of deception.
How many times have Anthony and Ariana been here studying my work, planning which pieces to forge first? How many conversations have I walked in on that I stupidly, innocently interpreted as normal family concern?
I check the back cover of the journal. There, just as Austin promised, a small key is taped to the leather—a safe‑deposit‑box key.
Tomorrow, I’ll go to the bank. I’ll look at Austin’s evidence. I’ll see proof of what my family has planned for me.
And then—then I’ll read the next entry in this journal, and I’ll follow whatever instructions my husband has left me, because Austin—brilliant, careful, loving Austin—has clearly planned something.
Outside, the family in the opposite apartment is still celebrating, still laughing, still together in all the ways that matter. I watch them for a long time, finishing my whiskey, holding the journal like a talisman.
Tomorrow, I think.
Tomorrow everything changes.
Tonight, I’m still the woman who doesn’t know. The mother who believes her children are good. The mother‑in‑law who thinks her children’s spouses care about her.
Tonight, I can still pretend the family in the window across the street is just like mine.
But tomorrow—tomorrow I become someone else.
Someone who knows the truth.
I don’t sleep.
How could I?
The journal sits on my nightstand like a bomb with a visible timer, ticking down to the moment I’ll have to face what Austin discovered.
At four in the morning, I give up pretending and make coffee. The apartment is dark except for the kitchen light, and in the window’s reflection I see a stranger: a seventy‑five‑year‑old woman with wild gray hair and hollow eyes, wearing her dead husband’s pajama shirt because it still smells faintly of him.
When did I become this person? This ghost haunting her own life?
The bank opens at nine. I have five hours to wait.
I spend them in Austin’s studio.
The room is exactly as he left it. Brushes in jars. Half‑squeezed paint tubes. That last unfinished landscape on the easel.
I’ve barely been able to enter this space since he died. It hurt too much, like visiting a shrine to everything I’ve lost.
But now I’m looking at it differently.
Not as a memorial, but as a crime scene.
My paintings hang on every wall, a rotating gallery of my life’s work. Austin always insisted on displaying my pieces here. Said they inspired him. Said my use of color taught him things his formal training never could.
I’d been flattered, touched by his support.
Now I wonder—was he protecting them? Keeping them visible, documented, harder to secretly replace?
I move through the room, studying each canvas with new eyes. A series of urban landscapes from the 1980s, all bold geometrics and primary colors. The abstract florals from my experimental period in the ’90s. My recent work: quieter pieces, more contemplative studies in light and shadow that reflect my aging perspective on beauty.
Which ones did they plan to steal first? The valuable early work, probably—the pieces that established my name, that appear in retrospectives and art history texts.
I take photos of everything with my phone, documenting each painting, its condition, its signature.
If they’ve already made substitutions, I need evidence of what was here before. The thought makes me sick.
How long have I been looking at forgeries of my own work without knowing?
At eight‑thirty, I dress carefully. Wool slacks. A cashmere sweater. My good coat.
Not the grieving widow in yesterday’s wrinkled clothes, but the woman I used to be: the artist, the professional, someone who commands respect.
The Chase branch on 86th Street is a ten‑minute walk. I arrive at eight fifty‑five and wait in the cold until they unlock the doors.
Inside, it’s all marble and glass and careful neutrality. A young woman at the reception desk greets me with a practiced smile.
“I need to access my safe‑deposit box,” I say, holding up the key.
“Of course. I’ll need to see your ID and have you sign in.”
She leads me through the process with efficient politeness, checking my identification against their records.
“Box 2847,” she murmurs. “That’s correct. It’s registered to Austin and Callie Fletcher.”
Was registered, I think. He’s dead now. But I don’t correct her.
She takes me into the vault, a room that feels like a mausoleum for secrets. Small metal doors line every wall, numbered and locked, each one containing somebody’s private truth.
She uses her key and mine together, slides out the long metal box, and carries it to a private viewing room.
“Take your time,” she says, closing the door behind me.
I’m alone with Austin’s evidence.
The box is heavy, stuffed with manila folders, each one labeled in Austin’s meticulous handwriting.
I lift out the first folder. The tab reads: FINANCIAL DOCUMENTS.
Inside are bank statements, transaction records, printed emails.
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