Chapter 9 - What Lydia Thought She Was Doing
I refused to believe Lydia secretly favored Mark.
Then Angela found the drafting attorney.
Retired.
Alive.
His notes explained.
Lydia changed the clause six years earlier.
Before I married Mark.
At the time, I was engaged to someone else.
Michael Bennett.
Mark's older brother.
I stared at the name.
I had barely known Michael.
He died from leukemia at twenty-nine.
Mark and I grew close afterward.
Two years later, we married.
Lydia's amendment originally named Michael Bennett.
Not Mark.
After Michael died, an automatic beneficiary definition transferred the interest to his next-of-kin sibling under specific language.
Mark.
Lydia had never intended Mark personally to inherit.
Why name Michael?
Because Michael worked with Lydia.
He helped stabilize her company during her cancer treatment.
She trusted him deeply.
Maybe too deeply.
Then Angela discovered another problem.
Michael had been engaged before me.
To Eleanor's niece, Caroline.
I never knew.
Mark never told me.
Why did it matter?
Because Caroline had access to Michael's estate files.
After his death, she handled several transfers.
One was the beneficiary interpretation that moved Lydia's contingent property interest from Michael to Mark.
Was that interpretation correct?
No.
The amendment said “Michael Bennett, or his lawful issue.”
Michael had no children.
If he died childless, the contingent gift should lapse back to me outright.
Someone inserted sibling succession later.
Forged.
Again.
Who inserted it?
The document metadata originated from Caroline's law-office computer.
Angela located her.
Caroline Bennett, thirty-six.
No relation to Mark despite the surname coincidence from marriage? Actually she had married after Michael's death and retained another surname? Better: Caroline West now.
She agreed to meet.
She admitted editing the document.
But claimed Eleanor ordered it.
“Why would you obey her?”
Caroline looked ashamed.
“Because she knew about Michael.”
“What about him?”
Michael had not died believing his leukemia was random.
He had worked at Hale Urban briefly.
He discovered accounting fraud.
Then became ill.
No connection.
No poisoning.
No conspiracy.
But before his death, he copied records.
Caroline kept them.
Eleanor learned.
Threatened to accuse Caroline of stealing client files and violating confidentiality.
Caroline panicked.
Agreed to alter Lydia's succession language.
In exchange, Eleanor left her alone.
Another person who chose self-preservation over truth.
Then Caroline gave me Michael's copies.
One ledger showed Eleanor paying Jonathan for years.
Another showed payments to:
M. Bennett.
At first we assumed Mark.
Wrong.
Michael Bennett.
My dead former fiancé.
He had accepted money from Eleanor too.
For what?
May you like
Caroline looked at me.
“To date you.”
