Chapter 4 - The Prenup Rebecca Never Wanted
Three weeks earlier, Rebecca had complained when I asked her to sign a prenuptial agreement.
She said it made our marriage feel transactional.
I told her it was standard.
I had a company.
A trust.
Property inherited from my father.
And most importantly, assets protected for Emily.
Rebecca eventually signed.
Or I thought she did.
My attorney, Allison Grant, was one of the guests sitting inside the chapel.
Michael brought her into the office.
Allison examined the Hawthorne Ridge documents first.
Then the yellow note.
Then she asked.
“Where is your copy of the prenup?”
I looked at Rebecca.
“At home.”
Allison’s expression changed.
“Daniel, mine is at my office.”
“Why?”
“Because Rebecca requested a revision yesterday.”
I stared at her.
“What revision?”
“She said you approved it.”
“I approved nothing.”
Rebecca started crying.
Not loudly.
Carefully.
The kind of crying designed to make the room feel cruel.
“I was trying to make sure I wasn’t entering a marriage where Emily could destroy everything.”
I looked at her.
“Emily?”
“She controls you.”
“She is my daughter.”
“She uses grief whenever she doesn’t get what she wants.”
Emily heard that.
I saw her face change.
I crouched beside her.
“Sweetheart.”
“None of this is because of you.”
Her eyes filled with tears.
“Promise?”
“I promise.”
Rebecca scoffed.
“There.”
“Every time.”
“She cries and you surrender.”
I stood.
“She is seven years old and her mother died.”
“And I’m supposed to spend the rest of my life competing with a dead woman?”
The room became silent.
That was the first truly honest sentence Rebecca had spoken.
For two years, she had pretended to honor my late wife, Sarah.
She helped Emily choose photographs for memorial days.
She lit candles on Sarah’s birthday.
She told me she respected the life I had before her.
Apparently, she had been competing with a woman who could no longer defend herself.
Allison opened her phone.
“The prenup revision Rebecca requested would have changed control rights over certain marital property.”
“Which property?”
“Your father’s lake estate.”
My stomach tightened.
The estate was worth nearly four million dollars.
But it was not the value that mattered.
Sarah and I had spent summers there with Emily when she was a toddler.
My father placed it in a trust for Emily before he died.
Rebecca knew that.
Or apparently, she wanted to change it.
“She couldn’t legally take Emily’s trust property.”
Allison said.
“But she was asking whether marriage could give her management rights over the residence.”
Rebecca whispered.
“I was going to make it our family home.”
I looked at her.
May you like
“You wanted Emily removed from the house built for her.”
Rebecca did not answer.
