Nora stared at the documents, her eyes moving rapidly across the lines of text.

Suddenly, her typing stopped completely.

She slowly looked up from the laptop, her expression turning from professional focus to utter disbelief.

“Emily,” Nora said, her voice unusually quiet. “Who told you the Brooklyn townhouse was sold to pay Michael’s debts?”

“Thomas Vale did,” I said, my heart starting to race again. “He brought me the transfer papers. I had to sign them so Margaret could buy it to cover the medical bills.”

Nora turned the laptop screen toward me and Richard.

“Look at the filing date on this deed transfer,” Nora said, pointing to a stamp at the top of the page.

I leaned closer to the desk, squinting at the pixelated image on Nora’s screen.

The digital document was a standard Connecticut property transfer form.

My eyes found the date stamped in the upper right corner.

“October fourteenth,” I said, my voice barely a whisper.

“Exactly,” Nora said, her pen tapping against the edge of her laptop.

“But Michael was still alive then,” I said. “He was in the intensive care unit. He was unconscious.”