Chapter 7 - VIVIEN’S DEFENSE
Vivien hired excellent counsel.
She did not confess.
She denied intentionally pushing Margaret.
“She stepped backward when I reached for her.”
She denied forging medical records.
“I created family care summaries.”
Nathaniel stared at her across a lawyer’s conference room.
“You wrote ‘progressive cognitive decline.’”
“I believed that.”
“You’re not a doctor.”
“No.”
“You wrote it under clinical-looking headings.”
“It was an internal family-office document.”
Technically plausible.
WHITMORE FAMILY HEALTH SERVICES was the name used by the family-office wellness program.
Vivien’s lawyer argued the pages were:
poorly labeled,
overconfident,
but not medical records.
Then Nathaniel showed the copied physician sentence with the added phrase.
Vivien’s lawyer changed approach.
“Mrs. Whitmore was concerned.”
Nathaniel said:
“About what?”
“My mother?”
“About preserving an accurate family care picture.”
Margaret laughed when she heard that.
Accurate.
That word would become important.
Vivien also produced messages from Nathaniel.
One said:
Mom is getting worse.
Another:
Can you keep track of everything? I don’t trust her to tell me when something is wrong.
Nathaniel felt sick.
May you like
Vivien had not invented his doubt.
She had organized it.
