Chapter 4 - The Custody Order I Should Have Requested Earlier
A Franklin County magistrate granted me emergency temporary custody of Emily the next morning.
Sarah received no unsupervised contact while Children Services investigated. Jason was ordered to stay away from both of us.
The order did not declare either of them guilty.
It created enough distance for Emily to sleep without asking whether someone could lock my bedroom from the outside.
My apartment in Worthington had one spare room. I bought blackout curtains because Emily panicked when she saw upstairs windows across the parking lot.
On her first night, she placed a dining chair beneath her doorknob.
I had spent the previous year telling myself she was adjusting normally to Sarah’s remarriage.
She became quieter after visits. She stopped asking to swim. Twice, she returned with bruises Sarah attributed to playground falls.
I questioned her gently and accepted the first explanation that allowed life to continue.
My mistake was not trusting Sarah.
It was treating the absence of a confession as proof of safety.
Helen remained hospitalized and was initially too weak for a long interview. Adult Protective Services obtained a temporary order preventing Sarah from managing her medical care or finances.
Her attorney, Samuel Ortiz, asked to meet me.
Helen had signed a letter in the hospital naming me as the person she trusted to deliver information to investigators if she became unable to do so herself.
“She barely tolerated me during the divorce,” I said.
“She distrusted you,” Samuel replied. “That isn’t the same as believing you would forge her name.”
He showed me a photocopy of a home-equity application.
The Westerville house had been used to secure a $310,000 credit line four months earlier.
Helen’s signature appeared on every page.
She said she had never seen the documents.
Most of the money had gone to Jason’s new property-maintenance company.
Another portion had paid Sarah’s personal credit cards.
The application claimed Helen lived in Arizona and had authorized Sarah to manage the Ohio property.
The false relocation had not been invented to explain an elderly woman’s absence.
It had been created before Helen disappeared from public view.
Samuel placed a second document on the table.
It was a petition Sarah had prepared asking a probate court to declare Helen incompetent.
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It had never been filed.
The date on it was two days after the loan funded.
