Chapter 5 - The Paper Trail
The next two weeks on Elm Street were an exercise in psychological warfare.
Greg tried passive aggression first. He turned the thermostat down to sixty degrees in the middle of a cold autumn snap. I simply bought a space heater and deducted the extra electricity cost from the final utility accounting sheet I was preparing for court.
Sarah tried the silent treatment, stomping through the hallways and slamming cabinets like a moody teenager. I ignored her, spending my days reading in the sunroom—a room I hadn’t been able to enjoy in years because Greg had turned it into his personal gaming den.
By day fifteen, desperation set in. They realized I wasn’t going to back down. The legal notice was real, and Thomas had already sent a formal letter to Greg’s employer warning against any attempt to interfere with the legal process.
On a Thursday afternoon, while Greg was out and Sarah was allegedly job hunting, I walked into the home office—the room that used to be my sewing room before they commandeered it.
I wasn’t snooping; I was looking for the original house deed documents that had mysteriously gone missing from my filing cabinet a year ago.
What I found in Greg’s desk drawer was far worse than stolen property deeds.
Sitting inside a dark green folder were equity release forms. Drafted, printed, and partially filled out.
Greg had been attempting to take out a reverse mortgage on my house.
My breath hitched in my throat as I flipped through the pages. He had attempted to forge my signature on page four. The only reason the application hadn’t gone through was that the bank required an in-person notarization with the original deed holder present—something he hadn’t been able to trick me into doing yet.
They hadn’t just wanted to live in my house. They were planning to leverage my life’s work to fund Greg’s failed business ventures, leaving me bankrupt and homeless when the bank inevitably foreclosed.
My hands trembled, not from fear, but from a cold, blinding rage.
I picked up the green folder, walked down to my car, and drove straight to Thomas’s office.
“This changes things, Eleanor,” Thomas said, reviewing the forged documents over his reading glasses. “This isn’t just a civil eviction anymore. This is attempted financial fraud against a senior.”
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“What does that mean?” I asked.
Thomas leaned back, his expression severe. “It means if they don’t vacate voluntarily by the deadline, they won’t just be tossed out by the Sheriff. Greg could be wearing handcuffs.”
