Chapter 2 - THE SIGNATURE
I did not go home that night.
I booked a room at a hotel ten minutes from Skylar’s school and told the front desk not to give our room number to anyone.
Then I called Rebecca Sloan.
Rebecca had been my attorney during a contract dispute five years earlier.
She was sharp, patient, and incapable of being intimidated by expensive suits or loud voices.
When I told her about the loan, she did not interrupt once.
When I finished, she asked one question.
“Whose name is on the deed?”
“Mine.”
“Only yours?”
“Yes.”
I had purchased the house two years before marrying Brandon.
After our wedding, I had refinanced the mortgage but never added him to the title.
Rebecca exhaled.
“That matters.”
Then her voice hardened.
“Send me everything.”
For the next forty minutes, I uploaded documents from the USB drive.
At 10:17 p.m., she called back.
“Charlotte, I found something.”
She emailed me a PDF.
It was titled HOMEOWNER AUTHORIZATION AND SPOUSAL CONSENT.
At the bottom was my name.
Charlotte Mercer.
And beneath it was a signature that looked almost exactly like mine.
Almost.
I stared at it.
“That isn’t my signature.”
“I know.”
“How do you know?”
“Because whoever forged it copied the way you signed documents about three years ago.”
My skin prickled.
Rebecca continued.
“Your current signature changed after you started using your middle initial professionally.”
She was right.
I had begun signing Charlotte E. Mercer after a fraud-prevention seminar at work.
The forged document simply said Charlotte Mercer.
Someone had copied an older signature.
I opened another folder on the USB drive.
Old tax returns.
Insurance forms.
Holiday cards.
Then I remembered something.
Two months earlier, Gertrude had asked if she could borrow an old storage box from my office because she wanted photographs of Brandon as a child.
That box contained our old mortgage papers.
I closed my eyes.
Rebecca kept talking.
“The document claims you gave Brandon authority to negotiate improvements and financing related to the property.”
“I never did.”
“There’s more.”
She sent another file.
This one contained the name of a company I had never seen.
BGM Residential Holdings LLC.
The mailing address belonged to a private mailbox in Riverside.
“BGM?” I whispered.
“Brandon, Gertrude Mercer,” Rebecca said.
My stomach turned.
“What are they doing?”
“It appears someone intended to move proceeds from the home-equity loan into this company.”
“How?”
“A renovation agreement.”
Suddenly Hailey’s message made sense.
The renovation was not about replacing cabinets or adding a bathroom.
It was paperwork.
A reason to release money.
A reason to move nearly half a million dollars somewhere I wouldn’t immediately see.
Rebecca instructed me not to confront anyone.
She would contact the lender’s fraud counsel first thing in the morning.
I ended the call and checked on Skylar.
She was asleep with one hand beneath her cheek.
My phone buzzed again.
This time it was Gertrude.
Her message contained only one sentence.
“You are destroying your husband’s future over a child’s silly misunderstanding.”
I read it twice.
Then another message appeared.
A photograph.
It showed our dining room.
The seafood had been cleared away.
Documents were spread across the table.
Brandon stood beside a woman carrying a leather portfolio.
Behind them was a set of architectural drawings.
Gertrude had sent the picture accidentally.
She deleted it seconds later.
But not before I saved it.
I zoomed in.
On the architectural plan, directly above the drawing of Skylar’s bedroom, someone had written a new label.
GUEST SUITE.
May you like
And above my office were two words that told me exactly whose future they had been planning.
GERTRUDE’S ROOM.
