Chapter 7
The child-protection investigation continued independently of the trust fight.
Nora was interviewed again by specialists.
She described other punishments.
Not beatings.
Not starvation.
Things designed to frighten and humiliate.
Theresa sometimes made her stand facing a wall for an hour.
Once she took away Nora’s bedroom door because the child “needed to learn privacy was earned.”
Another time she made Nora eat dinner alone after Nora asked when Audrey was coming home.
The most concerning detail involved the cage.
It was not originally installed for Nora.
It had once been used for a large dog belonging to a visiting relative.
The dog was gone.
The cage remained folded in a utility room.
Three weeks earlier Theresa ordered staff to assemble it indoors.
Reason:
“Storage.”
No one challenged her.
Then Nora remembered Theresa saying:
“If you keep acting ungrateful, I know where difficult little girls sleep.”
That suggested the cage was not spontaneous.
Then investigators found a notebook in Theresa’s office.
Most pages concerned company votes, hospital updates, and family meetings.
One page contained a list:
Nora dependence
School account
Clothing
Driver
Nurse
Phone access
Catherine
Beside Catherine:
Remove influence before transition.
Transition.
The word appeared repeatedly.
Theresa’s lawyer argued it referred to Audrey’s anticipated death and ordinary family planning.
Possibly.
Then another note:
If G unavailable, petition immediately. Existing relationship with child essential.
That introduced a second legal strategy.
Gabriele had been under federal investigation for organized-crime activity for years.
No indictment had yet been filed in this particular period.
Theresa expected one eventually.
If Audrey died and Gabriele became unavailable through incarceration or another crisis, Theresa intended to petition for guardianship of Nora.
She would then argue that she had been the stable grandmother consistently involved in the child’s daily life.
May you like
Except she was secretly making the child afraid of her father while creating the appearance that she was Nora’s provider.
The forty-five-dollar shoes were evidence of the method.
