“Daniel would want me here,” she said.
I was too numb to fight her.
For a week, she cooked casseroles nobody touched, answered my phone before I could reach it, and told visitors I was “too unstable” to manage conversations. Then, on the eighth morning, she slid a clinic card across the table toward me.
I stared at it.
“What is this?”
Marjorie sat calmly across from me. “An appointment. You are twenty-six, widowed, and unemployed. You cannot raise a child by yourself.”
My hand instinctively covered my stomach.
“No.”
Her expression hardened. “Don’t become sentimental. Daniel is dead. This baby will only tie you to a life you cannot afford.”
“That is my child.”
“That is my son’s estate,” she snapped. “And I refuse to watch you use a pregnancy to steal everything he worked for.”
The word steal cut through my grief like glass.
“What are you talking about?”
Marjorie opened a folder. Inside were documents with Daniel’s name, my name, and signatures I had never written. A quitclaim deed. A change to the life insurance beneficiary. A statement claiming Daniel intended to transfer the house to his mother before he died.
My signature sat at the bottom.
Forged.
I looked up at her while my grief turned cold.
“You forged my name?”
“I protected my son’s property,” she replied calmly. “You can leave quietly, or I can prove you are unstable. Pregnant women say irrational things all the time.”
For the first time since Daniel died, I stood up straight.
Marjorie smiled, believing I was frightened.
I was.
But months earlier, after we updated our wills, Daniel made me promise something.
“If anything ever happens to me,” he said, “call Claire Bennett before you sign anything.”
So I walked into the hallway, locked myself inside the bathroom, and called our attorney.
By noon, Claire stood at my front door.
By 12:07, Marjorie had stopped smiling…
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