Chapter 9
The signature was copied.
Again.
Not perfectly enough to fool a forensic examiner.
Perfectly enough to fool someone processing routine paperwork.
The letter claimed Leander believed temporary residential education might “restore stability to the household.”
The trustee had not approved funding.
They requested clinical support and direct confirmation from Leander.
That confirmation never came.
So the request remained pending.
Grant asked the obvious question.
“If the trustee was waiting for Leander, how did Melisande think this would work?”
The answer appeared in her emails with Wycliffe.
She expected a triggering incident.
Something serious enough that Leander would feel he had no alternative.
She repeatedly asked whether emergency admission could be expedited if a child became an immediate household safety concern.
Wycliffe responded that residential placement was not an emergency dumping ground and required appropriate assessment.
Melisande kept pushing.
Investigators then found a draft letter to the trustee.
Never sent.
It described both children as presenting an “escalating danger to themselves within the current residence.”
Both.
Not Ophelia alone.
Not Bastian alone.
The same language covered them together.
Then came the property documents.
The developer had drafted a nonbinding purchase proposal.
Fourteen-point-eight million dollars for the house and land.
Leander had never received it.
Melisande had.
She told the developer:
Timing depends on the children’s residential transition. Once that stabilizes, Leander will be more rational about selling.
Grant stared at the sentence.
Leander did not.
He was looking at another attachment.
Concept drawings for a new house.
Glass.
Stone.
Modern interiors.
Designed by Melisande.
Master suite.
Entertaining terrace.
Private gym.
Guest wing.
Two children's rooms existed.
But smaller.
Far from the center of the house.
And one version labeled them:
flex rooms / future use.
Leander felt something he could not name.
Not rage.
Recognition.
Melisande had imagined the children returning only occasionally.
May you like
The future she designed with Leander had Bastian and Ophelia physically pushed to the edge.
Part 10 would reveal that she had been trying to make the paperwork match that future.
