Nothing could make the coffin disappear.
Nothing could put Sophie back beside me.
But my daughter had known precisely how Marcus would react.
She had predicted him.
That mattered.
Mr.
Halloway began reading.
Sophie’s statement was plain.
No dramatic language.
No insults.
That was exactly like her.
She wrote that she had discovered Marcus’s relationship with Josephine months earlier.
She had confronted him privately.
Marcus denied it.
When she showed him enough evidence to make denial impossible, he changed tactics.
He told Sophie she was imagining the seriousness of the relationship.
He said pregnancy had made her oversensitive.
He promised to end contact with Josephine.
He did not.
Sophie found more messages later.
She recorded the dates.
She saved copies.
She stopped confronting him.
That was the part Marcus had misunderstood.
He thought her silence meant she had surrendered.
Instead, she went to Mr.
Halloway.
In her statement, Sophie said Marcus had begun asking unusual questions about the deed to the house, her father’s accounts, and whether she had ever updated the beneficiary designations associated with her property.
Josephine slowly turned toward him.
“You said those were already handled.”
Marcus glared at her.
“Would you shut up?”
Several people visibly recoiled.
Josephine did not.
“No.
You told me she had signed everything.”
The chapel erupted in whispers.
Marcus’s face changed.
Until then he had looked angry.
Now he looked frightened.
Mr.
Halloway raised one hand and waited for the room to quiet.
Then he continued.
Sophie wrote that Marcus had brought documents home and encouraged her to sign them quickly.
He described them as routine financial paperwork that would simplify matters before the baby arrived.
Sophie did not sign.
Instead, she photographed the pages and took them to Mr.
Halloway.
They included a proposed transfer of an interest in her house and a broad authorization that would have given Marcus far greater control over certain financial decisions.
Nothing had been completed.
Nothing had been transferred.
Sophie had quietly revoked an older limited authorization Marcus did possess and notified the appropriate institutions that no new instructions were valid without independent confirmation from her attorney.
Marcus interrupted again.
“This is character assassination.”
“No,” Mr.
Halloway said.
