Chapter 3: A Signature That Wasn’t Hers
Claire stared at the address while Daniel stood between her and the front door.
Margaret gripped the back of a dining chair.
“Why is my mother’s house in a message from a real estate agent?”
Daniel raised both hands.
“There’s an explanation.”
“Then explain it.”
“We were trying to help Eleanor.”
“By transferring our emergency savings to your mother?”
Margaret lifted her chin.
“That money is a deposit.
I already told you.”
“A deposit on my mother’s home?”
“Claire,” Daniel said, “your mother can’t maintain that place forever.”
“She is sixty-eight, not helpless.”
“She missed two property-tax payments,” Margaret replied.
“Someone had to be practical.”
Claire stepped toward her.
“How do you know anything about my mother’s taxes?”
Margaret glanced at Daniel.
He looked down.
“Daniel?”
“Your mother showed me some papers when she was recovering from surgery.”
“She trusted you to collect her mail.”
“She needed more help than that.”
Claire pressed the real estate agent’s number.
A woman answered on the second ring.
“Claire?” the woman said.
“This is June Parker.
I’ve been trying to reach you.”
“You sent me my mother’s address.
Why?”
A pause followed.
“I believed you knew about the proposed sale.”
“There is no proposed sale.”
Daniel reached for the phone.
“June, this isn’t the right time.”
Claire put the call on speaker.
“Daniel,” June said, “you told me Claire had approved everything.”
“I said she would approve it.”
“No.
You sent me a signed consent form.”
Claire’s fingers tightened around the phone.
“Signed by whom?”
“By you.”
Margaret stepped away from the table.
“This is becoming unnecessarily dramatic.”
“My name is on a document I’ve never seen, and you think dinner was dramatic?”
Daniel moved closer.
“Claire, listen to me.
Your mother owes money.
We found a way to keep the house in the family.”
“We?”
“My mother was going to purchase it.”
“With my savings?”
“It was temporary.”
Claire laughed once, but there was no warmth in it.
“You haven’t earned a paycheck in six months.
What were you going to repay it with?”
Daniel’s face hardened.
“I lost my job.
I didn’t lose my right to make decisions.”
“You lost the right to make decisions with money I earned when you started lying.”
June’s voice came through the phone.
“Claire, I’m suspending the file tonight.”
Margaret leaned toward the screen.
“You cannot do that.
We have a signed agreement.”
“I can delay any transaction when ownership consent is disputed.”
“It isn’t disputed,” Margaret snapped.
“Claire is simply upset.”
“I am not upset,” Claire said.
“I am telling you clearly: I did not sign anything.”
June exhaled.
“Then I need you and Eleanor in my office tomorrow morning.”
Daniel blocked the doorway again.
“You’re not dragging your mother into this before we talk.”
Claire looked at his hand on the doorframe.
“Move.”
“Not until you calm down.”
“Move, Daniel.”
His hand dropped.
Claire opened the door, but June spoke again.
“There’s something else you should know.”
Claire stopped on the threshold.
“What?”
“The consent form wasn’t only signed in your name.”
A document arrived on Claire’s screen.
June’s voice became quiet.
“It was witnessed, notarized, and uploaded from Daniel’s personal email.”
Claire enlarged the page.
May you like
Beneath a signature that looked almost exactly like hers was the name of a witness she recognized.
It was Daniel’s sister, Rachel.
