“Stop calling her unstable.”
My voice was quiet, but Mother stopped moving.
The video shifted.
Emily glanced toward the bedroom door.
“I think they know I found the documents.”
A noise sounded in the hallway behind her.
Emily froze.
Then the recording ended.
For a moment, all I could hear was my son crying upstairs.
I looked at the file list.
There were six more recordings.
Caleb lunged toward me.
I stepped aside automatically, caught his wrist, and shoved him back hard enough to stop him without hurting him.
“Don’t,” I said.
He stared at me.
Mother snapped, “This has gone far enough.”
“No,” I said.
“It just started.”
I opened the second file.
This one appeared to have been recorded from inside Emily’s robe pocket.
The image showed mostly fabric and the edge of our kitchen floor, but the voices were clear.
Margaret’s voice came first.
“You have no idea what Daniel has sacrificed for this family.”
Emily answered, “Then stop stealing from him.”
My mother’s face drained of color.
On the recording she said, “Watch your accusations.”
“I have the transfers.”
“You have numbers you don’t understand.”
“I have copies of forged signatures.”
There was a long silence.
Then Caleb’s voice entered the recording.
“You should think about the baby before you start a war.”
The file ended.
I looked at him.
He lifted both hands.
“That wasn’t a threat.”
“What was it?”
“I was telling her not to stress herself.”
Mother jumped in.
“Exactly.”
I opened the secure vault.
Emily had uploaded dozens of photographs and documents.
There were bank statements showing repeated transfers made while I was deployed.
There were scans of loan inquiries connected to the property.
There were emails from a broker asking for confirmation on documents supposedly signed by me.
And there were copies of those documents.
The signatures looked convincing.
Unless you had spent years signing military forms under pressure, fatigue, and scrutiny.
I knew my own hand.
Those signatures were not mine.
My mother sat down.
“This can all be explained.”
“Good,” I said.
“Explain it.”
She looked at Caleb.
He looked back at her.
