Chapter 4 - The Champagne Glass
The champagne bothered me.
Khloe was hospitalized and pregnant.
Why was there champagne in her room?
It wasn’t hers.
Isabella brought it.
She claimed she was celebrating “good news.”
The bottle had been removed after the incident, but Khloe remembered Isabella pouring herself one glass.
Then setting another empty glass on the table.
“Why?”
“I asked her.”
“What did she say?”
“That she brought two out of habit.”
It sounded trivial.
Until Khloe remembered Isabella repeatedly touching the second glass with a napkin.
Not drinking.
Wiping.
Then came yesterday’s detail.
Isabella had asked Khloe to hold the consent papers.
Then asked her to hold a pen.
Then the glass.
One object after another.
Khloe thought Isabella was being strange.
Now she wondered whether Isabella had wanted her fingerprints on specific items.
That didn’t prove anything.
So we didn’t pretend it did.
Khloe’s attorney, Natalie Brooks, advised her to preserve messages and stop communicating directly with Isabella.
I apologized to Khloe for demanding instant answers.
Then I did something harder.
I apologized for slapping Isabella.
“She was hurting you.”
“I know.”
“I still shouldn’t have hit her.”
Khloe squeezed my hand.
“You scared me too.”
That was difficult to hear.
I had entered the room believing I was the protector.
For several seconds, my wife had been trapped between two violent people.
One attacking her.
One attacking the attacker.
I couldn’t undo it.
I could decide what happened next.
That evening Natalie called.
She had finally received a copy of Anthony’s old estate correspondence.
There was no simple document giving Khloe control of the embryos.
There was something stranger.
Anthony had written instructions that if the storage question arose after his death, both daughters should be notified before any disposition.
Not because both owned them.
Because Anthony wanted them to learn why he had kept paying.
May you like
There was a letter.
And Isabella had apparently known about it before Khloe did.
