Chapter 2 - THE CREDIT CARD DECLINE
The scream belonged to Melissa.
Her voice rose through the house like a fire alarm.
“Brian, the card is dead!”
I heard chairs scrape and guests mutter as Brian hurried into the kitchen.
He had attempted to pay for a last-minute champagne delivery with a card attached to my account.
The transaction had been declined before the driver reached the porch.
“That old man did something,” Melissa hissed.
My doorknob twisted.
“Open up, Dad.”
I slid the financial statements into my leather case and dialed my neighbor, Ruth Alvarez.
Ruth had lived next door since Helen was alive, and she had a habit of noticing things other people missed.
“Walter?” she answered.
“I need a witness.”
“To what?”
“To the moment my son discovers whose house he has been living in.”
“I'm coming.”
I opened the bedroom door before Brian could strike it again.
He stood there red-faced, holding Melissa's phone like a weapon.
“Did you shut off our cards?”
“They were my cards.”
“You're humiliating us in front of everyone.”
I looked over his shoulder at the staircase, where three guests were pretending not to listen.
“You have confused humiliation with consequences.”
Melissa pushed past him.
“Do you have any idea what this will do to our credit?”
“Your credit is your responsibility.”
Brian stepped closer.
“Dad, don't make me handle this differently.”
It was a small sentence, spoken softly, and somehow more frightening than his loudest insults.
I told him that I would pay only my own bills, that he would receive written notice about living arrangements, and that any legal dispute would go through an attorney.
His face changed at the word attorney.
From behind him, Cousin Martha appeared with her coat in her hands.
She was pale.
“Walter, I need to speak with you.”
“Not now, Martha,” Brian snapped.
She ignored him.
“I never signed anything for them.”
The silence that followed was almost complete.
Melissa recovered first.
“What is she talking about?”
Martha looked directly at me.
“Someone forged my name, Walter.”
Brian laughed without humor.
“Everyone is getting dramatic over a joke.”
Ruth arrived at the front door and stepped inside carrying a small notebook.
“I heard yelling,” she said.
“Then you heard correctly,” I told her.
Martha reached into her handbag and handed me a folded paper.
It was a photocopy of a legal declaration bearing her supposed signature.
Across the top were the words CERTIFICATION OF SURVIVING BENEFICIARIES.
Beneath my name appeared a date of death.
The date was three days before my seventieth birthday.
May you like
That meant the people eating my cake downstairs had arrived to celebrate a man they had already declared dead.
