Chapter 5: A Familiar Signature
The signature page stayed open on my phone while Miles explained what the bank’s records could—and couldn’t—tell him.
“Someone submitted a paper request to update your account contact information,” he said. “It included a reference number from a letter we’d sent. The phone number added to the file isn’t the one you gave me.”
“Can you tell who sent the request?”
“Not from the record I can access. I can tell you the information was changed. I can’t tell you whose hand filled out the form.”
I stared at the number, unfamiliar down to its area code. The loan application listed Luca and Wendy’s old townhouse as its contact address. Now there was an unknown phone number, a signature I hadn’t written, and my mother’s maiden name sitting neatly beside it.
“Can you send me the request?”
“I can send the relevant account history through the secure message center. Keep the original evidence you have. Don’t alter anything.”
When the call ended, I opened the loan page beside a photograph I’d taken of the old family papers at Mom’s house years ago. I’d saved the picture after Dad died, when the house had been full of forms to sign and decisions no one felt ready to make.
Elena leaned across the booth, careful not to touch my phone.
“What are you looking for?”
“A signature I recognize.”
The old photograph showed Dad’s funeral-home authorization, with my name at the bottom. I pinched the screen larger. On the loan page, the last letter in my name swept beneath the rest, too smooth and too long. On the old form, my hand had made the same awkward hook, then pressed hard enough to score the paper.
I sat back. The coffee had gone cold in front of me.
“It looks like it came from this,” I said.
Elena studied the two images. “Someone had to get close enough to the papers to copy it.”
The paper itself was at Mom’s house, in the room where Dad had kept the family records. I didn’t want to go back. But leaving the original there felt like walking away from the one thing that might show me how the lie had been made.
I called Mom. She answered after several rings.
“Can I come in and look for Dad’s folder?” I asked. “I won’t ask you anything else.”
A pause. Then, quietly, “The desk in my room. Bottom drawer.”
“Thank you.”
“I’ll be downstairs.”
The line went dead before I could say more.
Elena drove. The afternoon light had turned the windows of the house the color of old brass. As we crossed the front walk, I caught myself looking toward the mailbox, then made myself keep moving.
Mom was in the living room, sitting near the window in a cardigan. Her gaze went to Elena, then to me. She didn’t look away, but her hands tightened around a glass of water.
I gave her a small nod and went upstairs.
The desk drawer stuck halfway. Inside lay a stack of folded papers held together by a brittle rubber band. The funeral-home authorization was there, its corners soft from years of handling. I set it beside the loan page on my phone.
The hook in my name was unmistakable. So was the little ink blot where my pen had paused.
A floorboard creaked behind me.
Wendy stood in the doorway, her expression arranged into concern. Her eyes moved from the old form to my phone.
“What are you doing in her room?”
“Looking for Dad’s papers.”
“She asked me to manage household business,” Wendy said. Her smile was soft enough to pass for sympathy from across a room. “I’ve been helping her sort through things for years.”
“Did you take a folder from this room?”
For the first time, the smile tightened at its edges.
“Your mother had papers everywhere. I could have carried a folder downstairs. That doesn’t mean I took anything.”
Elena had come to the top of the stairs. She didn’t speak, but Wendy saw her and shifted her attention back to me.
“You’re making her anxious,” she said. “She doesn’t need you storming in and interrogating everyone.”
“I asked one question.”
“And she heard it.”
Mom appeared at the far end of the hall. She had come up without making a sound. Her gaze rested on the old form in my hand.
“I said the bottom drawer,” she told Wendy.
Wendy’s face changed—not much, but enough. For a heartbeat, the practiced concern vanished, leaving something colder beneath it.
Then Luca came up behind her. He looked at the papers, at Elena, then at me.
“Get away from her,” he said.
“I’m standing in the room she told me I could enter.”
He stepped between us anyway, blocking the doorway with his shoulder.
“You keep frightening her, and I’ll tell the police exactly what you’ve been doing. They can decide whether you’re here to help or to upset a vulnerable woman.”
The words landed with the weight of a threat he’d been saving. My mother’s fingers closed around the banister, but she didn’t retreat.
May you like
Wendy touched Luca’s sleeve, a quiet gesture that looked almost tender. Then she turned to me.
“Be careful what you say when they come,” she murmured. “The next police visit may not end with Luca being questioned.”
