Chapter 3 - A Signature I Never Wrote
I had not witnessed any deed.
I hadn't even been in Westbridge on the date stamped beside my name.
On that afternoon I had been in Albany, sitting through a recorded legislative hearing that lasted seven hours.
There were photographs and an attendance transcript to prove it.
June examined the deed under the courthouse lights.
"Someone copied your signature, Clara."
"Or persuaded a notary to certify something that didn't happen."
The acknowledgment listed a notary named Lydia Crane.
Her commission number was valid when June checked the state registry.
But a valid commission does not make a false acknowledgment true.
The deed bore an electronic recording stamp and a reference to a title company called Hartwell Closing Services.
Arthur caught us studying it outside the courtroom.
"Mom signed that willingly," he said.
I looked at him.
"Then why did you need a guardianship order to sell what you say she no longer owns?"
He blinked.
Brooke arrived behind him.
"Because the transfer is complicated," she snapped.
"It seems to be getting simpler by the minute," June said.
June filed a notice disputing the deed and asked for an emergency order preventing any transfer while authenticity was examined.
The judge granted a brief temporary restraint pending another hearing.
Nobody cheered.
A piece of paper could protect Mom's house for a day, but it could not explain who had forged my name.
At the hospital, Mom looked at the signature on June's tablet.
"That's not how Clara signs her name," she said immediately.
"How can you tell?" June asked.
"She crosses the C before she finishes the last letter. She's done it since high school."
I had forgotten that detail.
Mom hadn't.
The image contained an imitation of my printed name and a long, neat cursive line I would never have written.
Mom pointed to her own signature next.
"That one was copied from my Christmas cards."
I thought she meant it looked similar.
She shook her head.
"Look at the tiny loop beside the H. My pen snagged on a card last year. It made a bump. That's the bump."
A defect from one accidental ink mark had been reproduced on a supposedly fresh document.
June asked Mom where she stored her unused holiday cards.
"Basement cupboard," she said.
The photograph left at the hospital suddenly made sense.
But the basement wasn't the only place paper had changed hands.
Evelyn had access to years of tax documents bearing signatures and account identifiers.
Whoever made the deed could have built a convincing fake from those records.
By afternoon, the temporary restraint had been delivered to Hartwell and the county recorder.
Mom slept beneath a thin hospital blanket.
I sat beside her until June called.
"I located Lydia Crane," she said.
"She says she never notarized that deed."
"Can she prove it?"
"She kept an appointment journal."
I heard a door close at June's end.
"Clara, someone broke into her office last night."
I stood slowly.
"Is she safe?"
"For now."
"What was taken?"
"Her notary journal."
June paused.
May you like
"And a photograph of her daughter."
