Chapter 10 - The Night Barbara Came BackAt 11:26 p.m., the hospital security desk called my room.
A visitor was asking to see Katie.
Her name was Barbara Reed.
I told the security officer that Katie was asleep and had not agreed to a visit. I assumed Barbara would leave.
Instead, she came upstairs.
When I stepped into the corridor, she was standing beside the nurses' station with her handbag clutched against her side.
“Where is she?” Barbara asked.
“Sleeping.”
“I need to talk to her.”
“No.”
Her eyes narrowed.
“You cannot keep denying me access to my granddaughter.”
“She's recovering from a serious injury. The hospital staff will decide when she's ready for visitors, and Katie's wishes matter.”
Barbara glanced at a nearby nurse, then lowered her voice.
“This has gone far enough. You need to tell the police you were mistaken.”
I stared at her.
“About what?”
“About Andrew.”
“My daughter identified him.”
“She's a child. She was in shock.”
“You knew about the documents. You were there that afternoon.”
Barbara's face changed.
For one brief moment, the polished expression disappeared, revealing something raw underneath.
Then she recovered.
“You have no proof that I was there.”
“Why are you so worried about what Katie told the police?”
“Because you're destroying a family over a child's confused memory.”
“Then you should have nothing to fear from the investigation.”
She stepped closer.
“Amanda, your father left you that house, but he made a mistake. He should have made provisions for Andrew. My son helped you build your life.”
“Andrew didn't build my father's house.”
“He was your husband.”
“He was my husband when he tried to sell it without my permission.”
Barbara's mouth tightened.
“You have always been ungrateful.”
I felt a strange calm settle over me.
For years, those words had made me scramble to prove that I was a good wife, a good daughter-in-law, and a reasonable person.
Tonight, they sounded like the desperate complaint of someone whose control was slipping away.
“Why did you want my house so badly?”
She looked at the door to Katie's room.
“You don't understand the situation.”
“Then explain it.”
“I cannot.”
“Or you will not?”
Barbara gripped her handbag harder.
“You think you're the only person who has suffered? Andrew has been under enormous pressure. Your father made promises he never kept. Your husband was forced to find another way.”
“My father was dead when these documents were prepared.”
“Your father caused this years ago.”
I stepped back.
“What did my father do?”
Before she could answer, the security officer approached and informed Barbara that she needed to leave the ward unless an authorized visit had been arranged.
She ignored him.
Then she turned back to me.
“Do you know what Andrew told me when he found Katie beside the road?”
I went cold.
“What?”
For a second, I thought she might finally tell the truth.
Instead, she shook her head.
“Nothing you would believe.”
She walked toward the elevators.
I immediately called Reynolds.
He arrived twenty minutes later and listened while I described the conversation.
“Did she admit being at the scene?” he asked.
“No. But she knew something happened there.”
“That's useful context. We'll document it.”
He asked the hospital to preserve the visitor records and security footage.
Before leaving, he told me officers had obtained additional evidence from the repair garage.
The mechanic had given them an invoice showing that Andrew had asked for the bumper repair to be paid in cash. He had also provided the original part, which was now being examined.
“Do you think Andrew will be arrested?” I asked.
“The evidence is moving in that direction. We still need to complete the interviews and make sure the case is supported.”
I looked through the window at the empty corridor.
“What about Barbara?”
“She has some explaining to do.”
The following morning, a police officer contacted Grace about the attempted property transfer. He confirmed that the transaction had been suspended and that the forged documents were being investigated.
But the property search uncovered a new detail.
Northstar had not offered to buy the house at its full market value.
It had offered a suspiciously low price.
A price that made sense only if the buyer intended to resell quickly or if there was something inside the property worth far more than the land itself.
When Grace called to tell me, I remembered Katie's words.
Grandma said the house wasn't the only thing they needed to get rid of.
I asked Grace whether the sale paperwork mentioned anything besides the property.
She checked.
There was an inventory attached to the proposed transfer.
It listed the house, the garage, several fixtures, and one additional item.
A locked study safe.
My father's safe.
I had not thought about it in years.
It was built into the wall of his old study, behind a wooden panel. After he died, I had kept the key in my bedroom drawer and assumed it contained nothing more than old financial records.
Andrew had once asked me what was inside it.
I had told him I didn't know.
He had laughed and said we should open it someday.
Now somebody had tried to include it in the sale of my house.
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And I finally understood that Barbara and Andrew might not have been trying to take only a building.
They were trying to get their hands on something my father had left behind.
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