Chapter 4 - The Betrayal at Sunday Cup
I didn't go home. I couldn't bear the thought of walking into our house—the house he had risked losing on a fraudulent gamble—knowing every wall was tainted by his lies. Instead, I drove straight toward Maple Street, my windshield wipers fighting a losing battle against the driving sheets of rain.
When I pulled up in front of Sunday Cup, the storefront was dark, the wooden OPEN sign flipped to closed. But a warm amber glow still spilled from the kitchen windows in the back, casting long shadows across the wet pavement.
I parked my car, sprinted across the sidewalk through the puddles, and pounded urgently on the glass front door.
A moment later, the lock clicked, and Inez Morales pulled the door open. She wore her standard flour-dusted apron over a dark sweater, her dark eyes widening with alarm as she saw me standing in the pouring rain, drenched and shivering.
"Audrey? Good grief, girl, get inside before you catch pneumonia!" Inez pulled me by the arm into the warm, sweet-smelling bakery, immediately rushing to grab a dry kitchen towel and wrap it around my shoulders. "What on earth are you doing out in this storm? You look like you've seen a ghost."
I stood by the glass pastry case, my teeth slightly chattering, trying to find the words to explain a nightmare that felt too absurd to be real.
"Inez..." I choked out, gripping the edges of the towel tightly. "Did Wes... did Wes come by here recently?"
Inez’s warm expression instantly faltered. Her shoulders stiffened, and she looked down at the floor before meeting my eyes again.
"Ah," Inez sighed heavily, walking over to the counter and leaning against it. "So you found out. I was hoping to tell you tomorrow morning when you weren't so overwhelmed with school."
My stomach plummeted down to my ankles. "He did come here? When?"
"This morning. Right around nine o'clock," Inez said, crossing her arms. "He walked in looking very important, carrying a briefcase. He told me that you and he had made a final family decision regarding the property. He claimed you needed the building back immediately to expand his catering business, and he brought a stack of legal papers demanding that I agree to vacate the premises within thirty days."
I felt the air rush out of my lungs. "Thirty days. He told the investors the same thing."
"I told him he was out of his mind," Inez continued, her voice hardening with indignation. "I pointed out that I have a legally binding lease with fourteen months remaining, signed by your mother and countersigned by you. Do you know what he said to me, Audrey? He smiled—that oily, arrogant smile of his—and told me that my lease didn't matter because you had already signed a formal termination agreement releasing the property back to him."
I closed my eyes, pressing the heels of my hands against my temples as a splitting headache bloomed behind my eyes.
"I never signed anything, Inez," I whispered fiercely. "I told him no six weeks ago. I told him no again tonight."
Inez paused, studying my face closely. The anger in her eyes shifted into a deep, heavy concern. She walked back into her office behind the counter and emerged a moment later holding a clear plastic binder.
"Audrey..." Inez began slowly, her voice dropping into a hesitant, frightened register. "When Wes was here this morning, he was very pushy. He left these papers on my counter when I walked into the kitchen to check my ovens. I picked them up to throw them in the trash, but... well, I looked at the bottom page."
She laid the binder flat on the counter and opened it to a highlighted section.
My heart stopped beating entirely.
Resting at the bottom of a formal property-surrender document was a signature.
Audrey Bell.
It was the exact same forged handwriting Simone had shown me at the restaurant—the sweeping 'A', the sharp 'B'. But here, it was attached to a document bearing my home address, my social security number, and an official notary stamp from a shipping and mailing center three blocks from Wes’s office.
"Is my name just typed on the letter?" I asked, my voice trembling so violently I could barely form the syllables.
Inez hesitated long enough for me to hear the faint hum of the refrigerator in the back room. She swallowed hard.
May you like
"No, Audrey," Inez whispered. "Your signature is physically on the document. It looks... it looks real. Someone signed your name in blue ink right in front of a notary public."
I stood beneath the warm bakery lights, staring down at the paper while the rain lashed against the storefront windows outside. While I had been shaping young minds and teaching grammar rules to eighth graders, someone had been forging my life away. And my husband was the architect of it all.
