While In The Hospital Grieving My Husband, A Stranger Tried To Declare Me Incompetent To Seize My Daughter — Until An Old Letter Uncovered His Secret
The following afternoon, the quiet hum of my house felt foreign after the hospital’s constant low thrum. Sophie was playing with her dolls in the living room, her laughter a sweet, healing sound. I was in the kitchen, trying to make sense of a grocery list, when my phone rang.
It was Detective Miller, the officer from last night. My heart immediately lurched. I braced myself.
“Mrs. Washington,” she began, her voice somber. “I have an update regarding Derrick Gaines.”
“Yes?” I asked, my voice tight. “Did you find him?”
There was a pause on the other end. “No, ma’am. He’s gone into hiding. We’ve issued warrants, but he’s proven slippery.”
My shoulders sagged. I had hoped for a clean end, for him to be caught.
“However,” Detective Miller continued, “we’ve been looking into the financial records, following up on Brenda Washington’s statement. It appears Mr. Gaines made a significant transfer yesterday morning, before the broadcast.”
A cold dread seeped into my veins. “What kind of transfer?”
“A wire transfer,” she explained, “from a secondary business escrow account belonging to Mr. Malcolm Washington. It was a contested account, but Derrick Gaines managed to access it using some incredibly intricate, and likely fraudulent, digital signatures.”
My mind flashed back to Brenda’s confession, to Derrick’s threat about the “fifty thousand dollars.”
“How much?” I whispered, almost afraid to hear the answer.
“Eighty-five thousand dollars,” Detective Miller stated. “It was wired to an offshore account. It’s almost certainly unrecoverable, at least for now.”
Eighty-five thousand dollars. My head spun. He hadn’t just gotten away; he’d managed to steal a substantial amount of money right under our noses. It was a bitter pill to swallow.
“So he’s just… gone?” I asked, my voice hollow. “And he took all that money?”
“For now, yes,” she confirmed. “The good news is, Sophie’s trust fund and the primary estate accounts are secure. We moved quickly after the broadcast. He won’t be able to touch those. And the emergency guardianship petition has been officially dismissed, of course.”
I took a shaky breath. Sophie was safe. That was the paramount concern. But the knowledge that Derrick Gaines was out there, a fugitive with a chunk of Malcolm’s money, left a lingering, unsettling shadow. It wasn’t over, not completely. Justice felt partially served, but incomplete.
I thanked Detective Miller, hanging up the phone with a heavy sigh. The sunshine streaming through the window felt less bright. Sophie’s innocent laughter from the living room was a stark contrast to the darkness that still clung to the edges of our lives.
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