Chapter 9 - THE DOCUMENT ON MASON’S LAPTOP
Digital forensics traced the travel-consent document.
It had been created on Mason’s laptop.
File name:
SOPHIE TRAVEL CONSENT FINAL.
The signature image at the bottom matched a scanned signature from my canceled France-trip letter.
Same microscopic compression artifacts.
Same irregular edge.
No need magical handwriting analysis.
A copied image.
Mason admitted creating the document.
His explanation:
“Celeste said Daniel approved the trip verbally and the airline might want updated dates.”
Did Celeste instruct him to copy the signature?
He said:
“She told me use the old form.”
Celeste denied that wording.
Messages helped.
MASON:
Need Daniel re-sign.
CELESTE:
No time.
MASON:
I can update old one.
CELESTE:
Do what you need.
Not an explicit instruction to forge.
Enough to show she knew an updated document was being prepared without my signature.
Then the tickets.
Purchased with Celeste’s personal credit card.
London hotel?
None.
Instead, a serviced apartment reserved for thirty days.
Paid by Mason.
Thirty days.
Not a weekend.
No return.
Then a draft email on Celeste’s laptop.
To me.
Unsent.
Daniel,
Sophie is safe with me. I am not keeping her from you permanently. But you need to understand that I will not return to a marriage where Rebecca’s money and memory outrank your living wife.
My attorney will send the revised postnuptial agreement and the petition concerning Sophie’s trust administration.
When those matters are resolved, we can discuss coming home.
I read it twice.
This was leverage.
Not a permanent disappearance according to her own words.
Still, she intended to take my child without permission and make return conditional on financial and marital decisions.
Then another sentence:
You always choose Sophie because you think choosing her means choosing Rebecca.
There.
Celeste’s grievance.
She did not see herself competing with a four-year-old.
She saw herself competing with a dead woman through the child.
The final question was the trust petition.
May you like
What exactly did she believe I could change?
Box 118 answered.
