Two days after my father-in-law died, my husband brought his mistress into our kitchen, / Chapter 14 / 80

Chapter 14 - The Deposition Subpoena

By noon the following day, Miriam’s threat materialized into twenty-four pages of bond paper delivered directly by a private process server.

*Miriam Vance Cross v. Amanda Vance, as Trustee of the Donald Vance Revocable Trust.*

The lawsuit alleged fraudulent conveyance, breach of fiduciary duty under common law partnership rules, and unjust enrichment. Attached to the petition was a motion for an emergency injunction to freeze the operational accounts of the eleven commercial properties, preventing any disbursements to Ruby’s college trust or the property maintenance funds.

I walked into Marilyn Freeman’s office at quarter past two. Donald’s veteran attorney looked older today, her reading glasses perched atop a silver bun, surrounded by thick volumes of the state probate code.

"She’s clever, Amanda," Marilyn said, tapping the lawsuit with an unvarnished fingernail. "Miriam isn't claiming the will was invalid. She knows we defeated Julian on capacity. She’s asserting an underlying property claim that pre-dates the trust by three decades. If the original seed money for Donald’s corporation was derived from an unrecorded partnership asset, the court has to freeze the revenue streams until a forensic accounting can determine the source of the capital."

"How long will that freeze last?" I asked.

"Sixteen to twenty-four months minimum," Marilyn replied grimly. "And while the accounts are frozen, the property taxes on the commercial strip on 4th Street still come due. If you can't pay them from trust yields, you’ll have to pay them out of your personal funds, or the properties will be auctioned on the county courthouse steps."

"Julian came to my office last night," I said quietly.

Marilyn’s eyes sharpened. "Julian? Did he threaten you?"

"No. He was terrified. He said Miriam was going after the lake house. And he told me something specific before he ran away: *Don't trust the date on that covenant. Look at the watermark.*"

Marilyn frowned, pulling Miriam’s exhibit—a high-resolution photocopy of the 1989 covenant—under her desk lamp. "A photocopy won't show the watermark. We need to demand production of the original document under Rule 34 for physical inspection."

"We won't get it before the injunction hearing on Friday," I pointed out. "Miriam’s lawyers will claim the original is in a secure repository in Chicago to stall for time. By then, the judge will have already signed the temporary restraining order."

I stood up, Donald’s folding ruler heavy in my pocket.

"Julian said Donald kept the real ledger beneath the cast-iron planer at the lake workshop," I said. "Donald never threw away a piece of paper in his life. If Miriam had a valid claim in 1989, Donald documented the rebuttal. He wouldn't have left Ruby’s future exposed to a debt he hadn't cleared."

"Amanda," Marilyn warned softly, "if you go out to that lake house alone, be careful. If Miriam’s backers are tracking Julian, they know where that property is. They know Donald kept his workshop intact."