Chapter 5 - The Table Full of Liars
The notice was rejected by the recorder’s office because the signature did not meet filing requirements. Naomi told me that did not make it harmless.
“Someone prepared paperwork,” she said. “That is enough to show intent. Save the rejection notice.”
“Can Foster be charged?”
“I cannot answer that without seeing who signed it and how it was submitted. We are going to report the attempted filing, preserve the originals, and ask that all communication go through counsel.”
The family confrontation happened three days later at the church fellowship hall.
Marguerite had called it a “birthday reconciliation luncheon.” She had invited nearly every Bell relative, two women from her financial circle, and the pastor’s wife. She had not invited me directly. Aunt Darlene sent me a message saying I owed it to the family to attend.
Naomi advised me not to go alone.
Odalys came with me. She wore a navy blazer and carried a slim folder of her own.
“What’s in there?” I asked.
“The reason I accepted the invitation.”
Marguerite had arranged the tables in a wide horseshoe. At the center sat a chocolate birthday cake decorated with pink roses. My name was written across it in icing.
Foster stood beside the cake, his face drawn and his tie slightly crooked. When he saw me, relief crossed his face so quickly I almost mistook it for love.
“Renata,” he said. “Thank you for coming.”
“I came to hear what you say when you have an audience.”
The room went quiet.
Marguerite rose from her chair. “This is not the time for hostility.”
“You invited me to a room full of people who have already decided I am unstable.”
“Because you have behaved irrationally.”
“You threw a pot at my head.”
A few relatives looked down at their plates.
Foster stepped in. “Mom was frightened and confused.”
“She was standing in the doorway.”
“You keep exaggerating.”
I turned to the pastor’s wife. “Did Marguerite tell you about the photographs of Foster kissing Priscilla?”
Her eyebrows lifted. “I was told there were misunderstandings.”
Odalys placed three photographs on the table.
No one spoke.
Marguerite slapped her hand over the nearest one. “Those are private.”
“So is my marriage,” I said. “Your son made it public.”
Foster’s cheeks reddened. “This is humiliating.”
“You should have considered that before asking Priscilla for money from our joint account.”
Aunt Darlene looked at him. “What money?”
Foster stared at me.
I placed the bank statements on the table. “Twelve thousand dollars transferred to an account he never disclosed. Four payments to Heartland Asset Solutions. A $4,500 payment to Priscilla’s business.”
“You stole my records,” Foster said.
“They were in our shared account.”
“You are trying to destroy me.”
“You attempted to transfer our house without my consent.”
The pastor’s wife whispered something to Darlene. Marguerite stood, knocking her chair backward.
“She has wanted this house since the day she met him.”
“I paid $145,000 toward it,” I said.
“That money was a bribe.”
“For what?”
“For control.”
I opened the green folder and removed Foster’s acknowledgment.
“Your son signed this.”
Foster looked at the page as if he had never seen it before.
Then Odalys opened her own folder.
“There is something else,” she said.
She connected her phone to the small projector used for church presentations. The screen at the front of the hall flickered to life.
The video showed the front of my house from Odalys’s doorbell camera. The timestamp was clear: 8:07 a.m. on my birthday.
Marguerite stormed onto the porch carrying the pot.
The angle did not show inside the bedroom, but it captured the sound. Her voice carried through the open window.
“Get up and cook for my son!”
Then came the crash.
My voice followed, steady and shocked. “You threw a pot at my head.”
Marguerite’s voice was unmistakable. “I threw it at the headboard.”
The room seemed to lose oxygen.
Foster closed his eyes.
“You recorded me?” Marguerite demanded.
“My camera recorded my front porch and the sound outside,” Odalys said. “I did not alter anything.”
The video continued for another minute. Marguerite told me I had no right to the house. She said Foster would “fix the deed” once I was out of the way.
That sentence landed harder than the pot.
I looked at Foster.
“What did she mean?”
He did not answer.
“What did she mean?” I repeated.
“She was upset.”
“You always say that.”
Marguerite lunged toward the phone. Odalys stepped back, and I moved between them.
“Do not touch her.”
For once, everyone heard the command in my voice.
The pastor’s wife asked Marguerite to sit down. Darlene began crying. Kyle quietly left the room.
Foster pulled me aside near the kitchen doors.
“You have made your point.”
“I have not made a point. I have shown what happened.”
“Can we talk privately?”
“No.”
“Please.”
“You had months to talk privately.”
His shoulders collapsed. “I did not know how to handle my mother.”
“You handled her by giving her access to me.”
He looked toward the cake. The pink roses had begun to slide in the warm room.
“I can fix this,” he said.
“You cannot fix a marriage by hiding the damage.”
The next morning, Naomi received a package from a law office in Dayton. It contained a letter from Heartland Asset Solutions dated six years earlier.
The letter addressed Marguerite as a “preferred faith-community client.” It instructed her to transfer the Dayton property to Foster temporarily so that “anticipated financial exposure” would not place it at risk.
At the bottom was Caleb Rusk’s signature.
The letter also said Foster had agreed to manage the property and return it once Marguerite’s “financial position stabilized.”
There was no record of the property being returned.
Naomi looked at me over the letter.
“Your husband did not merely receive a house,” she said. “He may have received it under an agreement he never told you about.”
“Does that explain the money?”
“It may explain some of it.”
May you like
“And the attempted transfer of our house?”
“That is the question we need answered next.”
