Chương 10
Nobody involved appeared to be having a two-point-four-million-dollar morning.
“Was Heather involved?”
I asked.
“No.”
“Does she know?”
“Some.”
“Did she know at dinner?”
“No.”
“Where is she now?”
“My sister’s.”
That surprised me.
“You’re not together?”
“We had an argument after we left.”
“About the bill?”
“About me leaving you there.”
I did not know what to do with that.
Scott lowered his voice.
“She told me I had spent ten years complaining about your father and then behaved exactly like him when it became inconvenient not to.”
Riley whispered, “I like Heather.”
I almost smiled.
“Was she right?”
“Yes.”
The answer was immediate.
For the first time, I believed him without resistance.
“Find out about the payroll records.”
“And don’t warn Dad.”
“I won’t.”
I ended the call.
Riley stared at me.
“What?”
“You’re getting better at talking to people who scare you.”
“He doesn’t scare me.”
“You were squeezing that napkin so hard it became rope.”
I looked down.
She was right.
The paper napkin had twisted into a tight white cord between my fingers.
I dropped it.
“Annoying observation.”
“Thank you.”
Maya called seven minutes later.
Her voice had lost the measured calm from her office.
Not entirely.
Just enough for me to hear urgency underneath it.
“I reviewed the pages you sent.”
“Am I in trouble?”
“Potentially, but we need precision.”
My stomach tightened.
“I hate that word now.”
“You’re going to hate several words by the end of this.”
“Great.”
“The guarantee appears significant, and the financial statement raises serious questions.”
“The signature isn’t mine.”
“I understand.”
“It looks like mine when I was eighteen.”
“That may matter.”
“How?”
“It suggests whoever produced it may have copied from an older document.”
The thought made my skin crawl.
“Can that be proven?”
“Sometimes.”
“How?”
“Comparison, metadata, document history, signature sources, witness testimony, records of transmission.”
She paused.
“But we are not proving anything today.”
I heard keyboard clicks on her end.
“I need you to do something uncomfortable.”
“What?”
“Think about every place your parents could have obtained examples of your signature.”
I almost laughed.
“Everywhere.”
“Be specific.”
“School forms.”
“Good.”
“Checks.”
“Do you write checks?”
“Almost never.”
“Old passport?”
“That’s not exactly the same.”
“Still useful.”
“Art.”
Maya went quiet.
“What?”
“My drawings.”
I looked at the portfolio beside my chair.
“I sign everything.”
“How long have you been signing work?”
“Since high school.”
“Did your signature change?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“College.”
“That could be helpful.”
The laundromat drawing flashed in my mind.
My signatures evolved along the bottom corners of hundreds of pieces.
I had never thought of them as records of anything except ownership.
“Do you still have old work?”
“Some.”
“Your parents?”
“Probably more.”
“Do not go retrieve it alone.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
That was a lie.
Maya seemed to hear it.
“Amber.”
“I heard you.”
“Good.”
She asked me to send the full lender package.
I did.
Then she told me to freeze my credit immediately.
Riley and I spent the next hour doing exactly that.
The process was less dramatic than I expected.
Usernames.
Security questions.
Temporary codes.
A page that failed to load twice.
At one point Riley yelled at a spinning icon as if intimidation might improve the website.
“This is why people become criminals,” she said.
“Because websites are slow?”
“Because legitimate life requires too many passwords.”
By the time all three freezes were confirmed, my shoulders ached.
Maya texted instructions for filing identity-theft reports and told me not to submit anything until we had reviewed the account list together.
I obeyed.
That was harder than it should have been.
Action made me feel safer.
Waiting felt like surrender.
At three, Jennifer called.
“I found the estate attorney.”
I sat up.
“Is he still practicing?”
“She is.”
“Right.”
“Her name is Margaret Bell.”
Jennifer sounded distracted.
“I spoke with her assistant.”
“And?”
“She has the file.”
My pulse quickened.
“Does it show what happened to the trust?”
“They wouldn’t tell me.”
“Because I’m not the beneficiary?”
“You are.”
“Then why not tell you?”
“Because I’m not you.”
That made sense.
I was no longer used to things making sense.
“She can meet you tomorrow morning.”
“Where?”
“Evanston.”
“I’ll go.”
“There’s something else.”
I closed my eyes.
“Of course.”
“Margaret’s assistant said the trust was closed when you turned twenty-one.”
My mouth went dry.
“Closed how?”
“She wouldn’t say.”
“Did the money go to me?”
“I don’t know.”
I almost snapped at her.
Then stopped.
That answer was becoming a fact of our relationship, not necessarily a failure.
“Did I sign anything?”
“Amber.”
“What?”
“You turned twenty-one while you were in Providence.”
I knew.
I also knew my parents had visited that weekend.
Mom had brought a cake from a bakery near campus.
Dad had complained about the hotel.
We ate dinner at a seafood place where he kept checking his phone.
Afterward, back at my apartment, he had opened his laptop.
My stomach turned.
“I signed something.”
Jennifer was silent.
“I remember.”
“What?”
“He said it was related to transferring my college savings.”
“Did you read it?”
“No.”
I said it before she could ask.
“No, I didn’t.”
Riley sat across from me and stopped moving.
Jennifer said softly, “Bring everything you have tomorrow.”
When the call ended, I walked to the bathroom and locked the door.
I did not need the bathroom.
I needed a room with a lock.
I sat on the closed toilet lid and pressed my palms against my eyes.
The memories were not dramatic enough.
That was what made them frightening.
Dad handing me a laptop.
Dad tapping the screen.
Dad saying, “Sign there.”
Me doing it while Mom cut cake in the kitchen.
A television playing somewhere in the apartment.
A roommate laughing down the hall.
Nothing in the room had warned me that the moment might matter seven years later.
There had been no ominous music.
May you like
No instinct telling me to run.
Just paperwork and frosting and my father becoming irritated because I asked whether we could finish after dinner.
