PART 6 – At Nine in the Morning, I Carried the Letter Into the Office Where My Parents Had Left Their Documents

I arrived at Mr. Fenwick's office before nine.

I had the envelope with me.

The pages were inside.

I had also brought a small notebook where I had written down the things I needed to ask.

I didn't want to forget anything.

The office was on the main street, exactly where Mom had said it would be.

I remember looking at the sign before entering.

It was strange to be there.

I had known the name Fenwick for years.

My parents had used him for legal matters.

But I had never expected to walk into his office carrying a letter that accused my sister of taking money and questioned the sale of our mother's home.

The receptionist asked whether I had an appointment.

I gave her my name.

She checked the schedule and asked me to wait.

I sat in a chair near the wall.

The envelope rested on my lap.

At nine, I was shown into the office.

Mr. Fenwick greeted me.

He recognized my family name.

I explained that I was Dorothy Carlson's daughter.

Then I told him about the letter.

I didn't try to explain everything from memory.

I handed him the pages.

He read them carefully.

I watched his expression.

He didn't interrupt.

He didn't make assumptions.

He simply read.

When he reached the section about the trust, he stopped for a moment.

Then he looked at me.

"Your mother told you about this?"

I explained that she had written it in a letter discovered by the people who purchased the house.

He asked when it had been written.

I showed him the date.

February 3rd.

He read the page again.

Then he asked whether I had brought anything else.

I told him about the blue tin.

Tyler and Hannah had found it beneath the third wooden stair.

They had left it unopened.

Mr. Fenwick listened.

I explained that Mom had described a ledger inside.

He wrote something down.

I wanted to ask him immediately whether Karen had been allowed to sell the property.

But I waited.

I had learned that rushing through questions didn't always produce answers.

He asked whether I knew the exact date of the sale.

I told him what Karen had said.

The house had sold nineteen days after the process began.

The buyers had paid in cash.

The amount was two hundred and ninety thousand dollars.

Mr. Fenwick looked at the letter again.

He asked who had told me that amount.

I explained that Tyler had.

The buyers had shared it when they visited.

Mr. Fenwick made another note.

Then he began discussing the trust documents.

He explained that he needed to review the actual paperwork before reaching any conclusion.

He didn't tell me that the sale was automatically invalid.

He didn't tell me that Karen had definitely committed a crime.

He was careful.

I appreciated that.

I had spent months hearing confident explanations from someone who never showed me the documents.

I didn't need another confident explanation.

I needed the records.

He confirmed that my parents had created a trust in 2019.

He located the relevant documents.

I watched him take them from the file.

The date was there.

The names were there.

And Emily was named in the arrangement my mother had described.

I felt my throat tighten.

It wasn't something Mom had invented in a confused moment.

There was paperwork.

There was a record.

My parents had made a decision about the house years before Karen sold it.

Mr. Fenwick continued reviewing the documents.

I asked what this meant for the sale.

He explained that the authority to sell depended on the legal ownership and the terms of the trust.

He would need to examine how the property had been handled and what authority Karen had actually exercised.

I nodded.

I was beginning to understand how complicated the situation could become.

But one thing was clear.

The letter had given us a reason to examine everything.

I took out my notebook.

I asked about the ledger.

Mr. Fenwick said the records in the blue tin could be important.

I explained that Tyler and Hannah still had the tin's location.

We would need to arrange for it to be recovered carefully.

I didn't want anything disturbed.

He agreed that we should preserve the material.

For the first time that morning, I felt that someone was taking my questions seriously.

I looked at the documents again.

The trust had existed since 2019.

Mom had written about it on February 3rd.

Karen had arranged the sale afterward.

I couldn't stop thinking about those dates.

They were no longer separate details.

They were pieces of the same problem.

Click here to continue reading: PART 7: The Documents From 2019 Forced Me to Look Differently at Every Answer Karen Had Given Me