I ordered Beverly out of my house, changed every lock, and told Caleb’s school that neither of them could pick him up without my permission. Still they wouldn’t stop. One day Caleb told me Uncle Curtis had called him on his iPad, promised a surprise gift, and told him to keep it secret from me. I phoned Curtis immediately and warned him never to contact my son again.
He just laughed. “Too late, Rachel. The surprise is already prepared.”
I had no idea those words were the last warning before the nightmare.
One morning I had an important online meeting with a client. Since I couldn’t leave Caleb home alone, I asked our neighbor, Mrs. Hollis, a former nurse, to stay with him. I told her to lock every door and never let Beverly or Curtis in.
Around noon Curtis messaged to say his mother wanted to apologize and make peace with Caleb. I didn’t reply. Less than an hour later Mrs. Hollis called me in a panic. Curtis had appeared at the back door, pounding on the glass and shouting Caleb’s name. She kept it locked, but while she was calling the police, Caleb suddenly bolted outside through the dog door.
Curtis grabbed him.
I raced to my car and drove home as fast as I could. As I turned onto our street, I saw a thick column of black smoke rising from the backyard. Our shed was engulfed in flames, and I could hear Caleb screaming inside.
“MOM! HELP ME!”
I ran for the shed, but the door was fastened with a heavy metal padlock. I seized a rock and hammered at the lock, even as my hands were scraped and scorched by the heat. Two neighbors rushed over, one with a crowbar, the other with a fire extinguisher. At last the door burst open. I plunged into the thick smoke and felt my way across the floor until I touched my son’s shoulder.
Caleb could barely stand. His pajamas were scorched, his face was black with soot, and he kept coughing from the smoke. I dragged him outside, clutched him to me, and sobbed.
Between painful coughs, Caleb pointed at Curtis. “Uncle Curtis pushed me inside… He locked the door.”
I spun around. Curtis stood beside his car, calmly looking at his phone. Beverly stood next to him holding her designer handbag, apparently unconcerned about her grandson. When I confronted her, she casually claimed Caleb was a naughty child who’d probably been playing with matches in the shed.
Even when the police came, she kept blaming him. She cried and told the officers I was mentally unstable after my husband’s death. Curtis pretended he’d only just arrived and was trying to help.
Caleb was rushed to the hospital. Thankfully he hadn’t suffered third-degree burns, but the smoke had seriously affected his lungs.
While he was being treated, Detective Olivia Grant came to speak with me. After hearing everything, she told me investigators had found traces of flammable liquid around the shed. It hadn’t been an accident. They were treating it as attempted murder.
But Beverly still wouldn’t stop. Shortly after Caleb was discharged, she filed an emergency petition seeking custody and demanding I be stripped of authority over his trust. She falsely claimed I’d become unstable after Daniel’s death and had started the fire myself to win sympathy.
Gregory Lane, the attorney who’d helped Daniel establish the trust, quickly uncovered something even more disturbing. Four days before the fire, someone had tried to transfer $400,000 from Caleb’s account to an overseas bank. The transaction had been flagged as suspicious, and the bank had frozen it just in time. My signature had been forged again, and the person responsible had even used Daniel’s old business phone number to bypass the security verification.
