Chapter 16 - The Name That Changed Everything
I couldn't speak for several seconds.
Evelyn had known Frank since before our children were born.
She had brought food after his funeral and sat beside me during the worst winter of my life.
Two days earlier she'd held my hand and told me love doesn't disappear when accountability arrives.
Why would her name appear on a form supporting a forged release?
The investigator cautioned me not to assume Evelyn had signed or seen it.
Identity details could be copied or misused, she said.
I agreed, but the uncertainty made me ill.
After the call I told Thomas.
He obtained the form through the appropriate process and found an address that belonged to Evelyn, but the signature looked unlike the one on her Christmas cards.
At his suggestion, I contacted Evelyn and asked if she would speak to the investigator.
She was astonished.
“Marianne, I haven't notarized or witnessed anything for Rachel's real-estate company.”
“Then somebody used your name.”
She fell quiet.
A moment later she told me that Rachel had helped organize a fundraiser at church the previous spring.
During the preparation, Rachel collected volunteer forms containing names, addresses, and signatures.
Evelyn had completed one.
So had several other members of the congregation.
I suddenly remembered the clipboard.
Rachel had brought it to a Sunday service and urged everyone to sign up for community projects.
I had signed my own name on the volunteer sheet too.
The memory sharpened another detail.
After the service, Dana had stood in the lobby beside Rachel, helping sort the forms into folders.
They might have obtained handwriting samples and identifying details in an entirely ordinary setting.
That did not prove they used them dishonestly.
But it suggested a possible source investigators could examine.
Evelyn agreed to provide her own samples and records.
Then she apologized.
I stopped her.
“You didn't cause this by volunteering at church.”
“Neither did you,” she said softly.
Her words stayed with me all afternoon.
For so long I had blamed myself for everything Eric did.
It was true that I had enabled him.
It was not true that I had instructed him to mislead lenders or tolerate a false release.
Responsibility had to return to the people who made the decisions.
That evening Thomas showed me something else.
The disputed March release had been associated in the file with a scanned identity card.
The photograph wasn't of me.
It was blurred, but the facial structure suggested another older woman.
The name and address matched mine, though the image did not.
I stared at it.
“Who is that?”
“We don't know,” Thomas said.
“An impersonator, or perhaps an altered or mismatched scan.”
The notarial inquiry would have to determine that.
Then Thomas enlarged a corner of the image.
Behind the card, barely visible, stood a blue ceramic vase with a narrow gold band.
I recognized the vase immediately.
Rachel had displayed it in her kitchen for years.
It had been a birthday gift from me.
The photo might have been taken in her home.
The revelation made me feel less triumphant than sick.
Every object I'd given them seemed to have been woven into a scheme I never imagined.
Before we ended the meeting, Thomas told me the title company had formally rejected the release as sufficient for its pending closing without further resolution.
The buyer could walk away, renegotiate, or seek other relief, but the accelerated sale was no longer proceeding as planned.
For the first time, our evidence had changed something concrete.
That evening I went home and cooked beef stew in Frank's Dutch oven.
I measured the vegetables by memory, the way he'd taught me.
Then a knock came at the door.
Eric stood outside, alone.
He held a small envelope.
“I found this in Rachel's desk,” he said.
Inside was a photograph of a woman sitting at our old church fundraiser table.
She wore a borrowed gray wig and a pair of glasses.
Beneath the photograph, written in Rachel's familiar handwriting, were two words.
May you like
MARIANNE LOOKALIKE.
