Chapter 6: The Second Signature
I sat down next to Emily and looked at the page.
The signature read *Emily Mercer* in a looping, slightly backward slant.
Emily's actual handwriting was small and upright — I had watched her develop it over decades of birthday cards and grocery lists and the letters she used to send me when she studied abroad in her twenties.
This was not her handwriting.
"He forged it," she said.
It wasn't a question.
"It looks that way."
She set the page down carefully, as if it might dissolve.
"I kept telling myself there was an explanation.
That maybe I had signed something and forgotten.
That maybe I was misremembering." She looked at her hands.
"I wanted there to be an explanation."
"Emily, this is not your fault."
"I let this happen."
"He forged your name on a legal document.
That is not something you let happen.
That is something he did."
She was quiet for a moment.
Then: "What do I do?"
"Tomorrow morning I'm meeting with Gerald Holt.
I want you to come with me.
Bring everything — the equity line documents, anything else you found in his files, anything with your name on it that you didn't sign."
"He'll notice if the documents are gone."
"Make photographs of everything tonight.
Put the originals back.
Bring the photographs."
She nodded slowly.
She picked up her phone and started taking pictures of each page, methodical and careful.
I went to the kitchen and made two cups of tea.
When I came back, Jason was standing in the front doorway.
He looked at the documents spread across the coffee table.
His eyes moved to Emily's phone in her hand.
Something passed across his face — a quick recalculation.
"What are you doing?" he asked.
Emily didn't flinch.
"Looking through paperwork."
"Those are private financial records."
"They have my name on them."
He stepped into the room.
"Emily, I think you and I need to talk.
Alone."
"Anything you say to me you can say in front of my father."
Jason looked at me.
The careful expression was back — the one he'd worn in the kitchen that morning, the one that appeared whenever he was deciding how much to give away.
"Walter, I understand you're upset.
And I understand that the property situation is more complicated than I realized.
I want to fix that.
I'm willing to sit down with both lawyers and work out something fair."
"That's good," I said.
"Gerald Holt will be glad to hear it."
"But I need Emily to understand that some of these financial decisions were made under a lot of pressure.
The business was failing.
I was trying to protect this family."
"By forging my signature?" Emily said.
The room went still.
Jason's jaw moved.
"I don't know what you think you're looking at—"
"I know my own handwriting, Jason."
He looked at the document in her hand.
He looked at me.
He looked back at her.
"You're making an accusation that—"
"I'm not making an accusation.
I'm reading a document." She set her phone face-down on the table.
"Is that my signature or isn't it?"
He didn't answer.
"Jason." Her voice was very quiet.
"Is that my signature?"
He sat down in the armchair across from her.
He put his elbows on his knees and pressed his fingers together in front of his mouth.
He stayed like that for a long moment.
Then he said: "I was going to pay it back before you ever found out."
Emily closed her eyes.
"I had a plan.
The business was supposed to turn around.
I had a contract lined up that would have covered everything.
It fell through at the last minute and I—" He stopped.
"I panicked."
"You forged my name on an eighty-thousand-dollar loan."
"I was protecting us."
"You were protecting yourself." She opened her eyes.
"And when the money ran out, you put a padlock on my father's refrigerator and told him he didn't belong here."
Jason looked at the floor.
"I want you to sleep in the guest room tonight," Emily said.
"I need to think."
He stood up slowly.
He looked at me once more on his way out — not with anger, but with something closer to fear.
I heard the guest room door close down the hall.
Emily picked up her cup of tea.
Her hand was steady.
"He'll try to talk his way out of this tomorrow," she said.
"Probably."
"Will Gerald be able to stop him?"
"Gerald doesn't need to stop him," I said.
"The documents will."
She nodded.
She took a slow sip of tea.
May you like
Outside, a car passed on the street, its headlights sweeping briefly across the ceiling.
"Dad," she said quietly, "I think I've been asleep for a very long time."
