Chương 6
"No," she said, sharper than she intended.
"We know it wasn't me."
Reyes watched her carefully.
"Then you need to explain how your name ended up on paperwork transferring your father's workshop to someone else."
The question stayed between them.
Not because she did not have an answer.
Because the answer sounded impossible even to her.
"I didn't know the documents existed until yesterday."
Reyes looked down at the folder.
"That is the problem."
Mara closed the door halfway without meaning to.
For years, people had described her as careful.
Reliable.
The person who remembered birthdays, paid bills early, and brought extra copies of things nobody else thought to print.
Now her name was attached to a decision she never made.
A decision that could cost her the last thing her father had left behind.
"I need my lawyer," she said.
Reyes nodded.
"That would probably be smart."
The way he said it bothered her more than the words.
Not because he sounded suspicious.
Because he sounded tired.
Like he had already watched too many people discover that the truth was not always simple.
The ride to the county office took twenty minutes, and neither of them spoke much.
Rain tapped against the windshield, not heavy enough to become a storm, just enough to make every road look darker.
Mara stared out the passenger window at stores and houses passing by.
She noticed a man carrying a broken lamp into a repair shop.
A woman arguing gently with a child outside a bakery.
A teenager running after a bus that had already started moving.
People continued having normal problems.
Mara hated them for it.
She hated that the world could keep moving when hers had stopped.
At the county office, a clerk named Ellen Pierce led them into a small conference room with a scratched wooden table.
Ellen was in her fifties, with reading glasses hanging from a chain around her neck.
She had the expression of someone who spent years explaining bad news to people who wanted the person delivering it to be wrong.
"Mara, I want to be clear," Ellen said.
"We are not accusing you of fraud."
Mara sat down slowly.
"But?"
"But someone used your identity."
"Someone?"
Ellen opened the folder.
"There are three documents."
"The transfer agreement."
"The notarized confirmation."
"And a request for a new ownership record."
Mara stared at the papers.
"Who submitted them?"
Ellen hesitated.
"Your father."
The room became strangely quiet.
Mara almost laughed.
Not because it was funny.
Because her brain rejected the sentence before it could process it.
"My father died eight months ago."
"I know."
"He couldn't submit anything."
Ellen folded her hands.
"We noticed that."
Mara looked at Reyes.
He did not look surprised.
That frightened her.
"You knew this before you came to my apartment."
"We suspected it," Reyes said.
"Then why did you let me think I was the problem?"
"Because we needed to know if you already had an explanation."
Mara leaned back.
The anger arrived before the fear.
"You tested me."
"We asked questions."
"You watched my reaction."
Reyes did not deny it.
She looked at the papers again.
Her father's name sat there in black ink.
Thomas Voss.
The man who spent thirty years repairing antique furniture in a building behind their house.
The man who hated computers and still wrote phone numbers on scraps of paper.
The man who once drove forty miles to return a wallet because he found a child's drawing inside.
A man who could be stubborn, impossible, and unfair.
But not this.
Not paperwork after death.
Not a secret sale.
"Who benefits?" Mara asked.
Ellen glanced at her.
"That is what we are trying to determine."
The question bothered Mara because it was the same question she had asked herself since finding the envelope.
Who benefits?
Her father had left debts.
The workshop had value, but not enough to explain why someone would risk forging records.
Unless the workshop was not the real thing someone wanted.
Unless something inside it mattered more.
The thought made her uncomfortable.
She had spent the previous day searching through every corner of that building.
She had found old tools, unpaid invoices, boxes of photographs, and the envelope hidden beneath the floor.
She had not found anything valuable.
But maybe she had been looking for the wrong thing.
"Can I see the original documents?" she asked.
Ellen frowned.
"They are being reviewed."
"I need to see them."
"Mara."
"No."
Her voice surprised everyone, including herself.
"I have spent my entire life being told my father was honest."
She looked at the papers.
"I need to know if I was wrong."
Nobody answered immediately.
The silence was not uncomfortable.
It was heavier than that.
It was the silence people used when they understood a person had crossed from curiosity into necessity.
Ellen finally closed the folder.
"I can arrange access under supervision."
"Today?"
"Tomorrow."
"Why not today?"
"Because government offices do not move because someone is desperate."
The words sounded harsh, but Ellen's face softened afterward.
Mara almost apologized.
She almost explained that she was not angry at her.
Instead, she looked away.
That had become her habit after her mother died.
Holding words until they became smaller.
It was easier than admitting how much she needed people.
When she returned home that evening, the apartment felt different.
Not because anything had changed.
Because she had.
She placed the envelope back on the table.
Inside were copies of old records, a photograph of the workshop from fifteen years earlier, and a handwritten note from her father.
She had read the note so many times that the folds had begun to tear.
Mara,
If you are reading this, then I waited too long.
I am sorry for that.
The first time she saw the words, she thought they were an apology for something simple.
A forgotten conversation.
A family argument.
A regret from a difficult man.
May you like
Now they felt like a warning.
Her phone buzzed.
