You need to understand we didn’t have a choice.
That last one told me more than the apology.
There is always a choice.
Sometimes every available choice is painful.
That is not the same as having none.
At 10:43 p.m., Derek texted me.
I did not know he still had my number.
You are making this more difficult than it needs to be.
I stared at the message.
Apparently, my homelessness was becoming inconvenient for him.
He followed with another.
Emily is devastated. Stop punishing her.
I turned the phone off.
The next morning, Martin had coffee waiting.
His office had changed since William and I last visited.
New carpet.
Same terrible landscape painting in the conference room.
Martin had aged too.
More gray hair.
Thinner face.
Still wore the same silver-framed glasses.
He took one look at my cheek.
“Did Emily do that?”
“Yes.”
“Do you want to report it?”
“No.”
“Not today?”
“I said no.”
He nodded.
“Your decision.”
That was all.
No lecture.
He opened a thick file.
“Here is what we know.”
The house had been placed in the Gable Family Living Trust nine years earlier.
William and I had both been trustees.
After his death, I became sole acting trustee.
Emily was named as a successor only if I died or became legally unable to act.
I had done neither.
“Your daughter had no authority to sell the property,” Martin said.
“What did she use?”
“A document claiming you had given her power of attorney while traveling.”
I stared at him.
“I did not.”
“I know.”
“Is my signature on it?”
“A signature represented as yours.”
“Show me.”
He hesitated.
Then turned the paper around.
The signature was close.
Too close.
Ruth Gable.
The R curved the way mine did.
The G was wrong.
William used to tease me because I made my G look like a six.
This one looked perfectly normal.
“That isn’t mine.”
“I did not think it was.”
“Who notarized it?”
“We’re looking into that.”
I sat back.
“What did they get for the house?”
Martin glanced down.
“Two hundred eighty-five thousand.”
I laughed.
I could not help it.
My house was worth considerably more.
Not a mansion.
Not even close.
But houses in our neighborhood had been selling in the low four hundreds.
“They sold forty years of my life for two hundred eighty-five thousand dollars.”
“It was a fast cash transaction.”
“Of course it was.”
“The buyer appears to be an investment company that specializes in distressed properties.”
“I wasn’t distressed until they arrived.”
Martin almost smiled.
“The transaction moved unusually quickly.”
“Did the buyer pay them?”
“A substantial amount was released.”
“How?”
“We’re still tracing that.”
“And they changed my locks before anyone noticed the title problem.”
“Yes.”
I looked down at the forged signature again.
“Derek.”
Martin did not answer.
“You think he did this.”
“I think we know Emily and Derek benefited from the transaction. I am not going to tell you who created which document until we have evidence.”
Another lawyer answer.
I respected it.
“Then what happens now?”
“We notify the buyer formally that title is disputed. We provide the trust documents. We challenge the deed. We preserve everything. Nobody gets to pretend your absence equals consent.”
“Do I get my house back?”
Martin took off his glasses.
“Ruth, a recorded piece of paper does not become valid merely because someone convinced a county clerk to accept it. But correcting a fraudulent transfer is a process, not a magic trick.”
“How long?”
“I don’t know.”
That answer was honest.
I hated it.
For the next four days, I lived in the hotel.
Not because I had nowhere else to go.
My sister begged me to fly back to Florida.
Two friends offered spare rooms.
A neighbor offered her guest bedroom.
I stayed at the hotel because I wanted to remain close.
Close to my house.
Close to Martin.
Close to the problem.
Emily kept calling.
On the fifth day, I answered.
“Mom.”
Her relief was immediate.
“Oh thank God.”
“What do you want?”
“I want to explain.”
“Start with the pearls.”
Silence.
“What?”
“The earrings you were wearing.”
Another pause.