Chapter 4 - THE FIRST PERSON EMILY CALLED
Emily’s first call the next morning was not to the sheriff’s office.
It was to Laurel Hart, her father’s older sister in Colorado Springs.
Aunt Laurel answered on the second ring.
“Em?”
Emily started crying so hard she had to hand the phone to Alan for a minute just to get through her name.
Laurel drove to Grand Junction that day.
She was fifty-two, sharp-eyed, divorced, and the only adult in Jake Hart’s family who had never fully relaxed after Dana remarried. Not because she hated Alan—she actually liked Alan—but because Dana had always treated the conservatorship like an insult rather than a responsibility.
Laurel sat beside Emily’s hospital bed, listened to the canyon story without interrupting, and then asked the first useful question anyone had asked.
“What exactly was in the court packet?”
Emily showed her the phone pictures from the cookie tin.
Laurel’s expression hardened immediately.
“This review should have happened last year.”
“What do you mean?”
Laurel enlarged one page with two fingers.
“The court asked for a supplemental accounting ten months ago. Dana marked your address as changed and had notices forwarded.”
Emily stared at her.
Alan looked sick.
“Can she do that?”
“She can request mailing changes,” Laurel said. “She can’t make a court review disappear.”
Deputy Serrano came by later for follow-up questions. Emily repeated that Dana cut the rope. Laurel requested a forensic examination of the line and formal preservation of Dana’s phone. The deputy explained they would seek a warrant for the damaged device if necessary, but results would take time.
He also asked Emily why her mother might want to hurt her.
Emily hated not having an answer that sounded adult enough.
“Money, maybe.”
Serrano didn’t dismiss it.
“Then we’ll look at money.”
After he left, Alan stood by the window with his hands in his pockets.
“I told Dana I was going to help you get the court papers sorted.”
Emily’s head snapped toward him.
“When?”
“The night you showed me the photos.”
Laurel closed her eyes briefly.
“Alan.”
He looked destroyed.
“I thought if I made it clear I wasn’t taking sides, she’d calm down.”
Emily almost laughed.
Not taking sides was Alan’s favorite fantasy.
It had governed most of their family for years.
Keep the peace.
Don’t escalate.
Hear everyone out.
As if every conflict started with equal honesty and equal power.
“She didn’t calm down,” Emily said.
Alan shook his head.
“No.”
Then he told them something he should have told sooner.
Three days before the hike, Dana asked him whether Emily had shown him “anything from that dead account.”
Alan thought she meant old trust statements.
Now he wasn’t sure.
Laurel looked from Alan to Emily.
“We need the full conservatorship file.”
That became Emily’s first real decision.
She authorized Laurel to retain an attorney in Grand Junction and seek emergency review of every dollar Dana had managed in her name.
It was the first step Emily took that day.
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It also meant the canyon was no longer just a family crisis.
It was becoming a financial one too.
