Chapter 5: The Woman Who Signed My Name
I set the document on the table and pressed both palms flat against it, as if I could hold it still.
"That's a forgery," I said.
"Yes," Ruth said.
"Dora signed my name."
"That is what I believe."
Logan was reading over my shoulder.
I felt him go rigid beside me.
"That's a crjme," he said.
"It is," Ruth said.
"Which is why I kept the copy.
Which is why I'm here."
I looked at the signature again.
Someone had tried to approximate my handwriting — the looping E, the way I connect the letters in my last name — but the pressure was wrong.
The pen had hesitated twice.
I could see it in the ink.
Dora had sat somewhere quiet, with a pen and a piece of paper, and practiced writing my name until she thought it was close enough.
Fifteen years ago.
While I was still in a hospital bed.
"She visited me," I said.
My voice sounded strange to me, like it was coming from somewhere outside my body.
"After.
She came to the hospital and she held my hand and she cried with me.
She told me Lily was at peace."
Ruth said nothing.
"She sat there and she cried," I said again.
Logan stood up.
He walked three steps away from the table, stopped, and stood with his back to us, hands at his sides.
"Logan," I said.
"I'm fine." He wasn't.
"I just need a second."
I gave him the second.
I looked back at Ruth.
"Why did she do it?" I said.
"Dora.
Why would she—" I stopped.
The question felt enormous and unanswerable and I asked it anyway.
"Why would she take my daughter?"
Ruth was quiet for a moment.
"I don't know her reasons.
I only know what I saw.
But I've had fifteen years to think about it." She folded her hands.
"Your ex-husband — Logan's father — he and Dora were very close.
And from what I understood at the time, there was a custody situation being discussed.
A second child would have complicated things."
The room tilted slightly.
"She took Lily," I said slowly, "so that I would only have one child.
So the custody arrangement would be simpler."
Ruth didn't confirm it.
She didn't have to.
Logan turned around.
His face was composed now in a way that was worse than tears — the careful, deliberate composure of someone who has decided to hold it together because they don't have another option.
"Where's Dad in all of this?" he said.
Ruth looked at him.
"I don't know.
I never saw your father that night.
Only Dora."
"But he knew," Logan said.
It wasn't a question.
"I can't tell you that," Ruth said.
"I genuinely don't know."
Logan looked at me.
The question was still in his eyes, and I couldn't answer it, because the truth was I didn't know either.
I had spent fifteen years believing my daughter was buried in a cemetery plot I visited twice a year.
I had no idea what her father knew or didn't know.
I had no idea what I had been living inside of.
"What do we do now?" Logan said.
I picked up the document.
The forged signature.
My name in someone else's hand.
"We get a lawyer," I said.
"Today."
"And Gran?"
I folded the document carefully and placed it back in the envelope.
"Not yet," I said.
"We don't tell Dora anything until we know exactly what we're doing.
Ruth — is there anyone else who knows you've found Lily?
Anyone you've told?"
"No one," Ruth said.
"Only you."
"And the journalists you mentioned — the three you said were waiting."
Ruth met my eyes.
"That was a way to make sure you came.
I'm sorry.
There are no journalists.
There's only me, and what I know, and fifteen years of trying to figure out how to make it right."
I looked at her for a long moment.
"You cut his flowers," I said.
"I needed you both outside together.
I needed Logan to be the one to open it.
I knew if you found it alone you'd try to protect him." She paused.
"I'm sorry for that too.
It was his garden.
I shouldn't have touched it."
Logan sat back down.
He pulled the photograph of Lily — the recent one, the laughing girl outside the school — closer to him and studied it.
"She doesn't know we exist," he said.
"Probably not," Ruth said gently.
"She's been living her whole life not knowing she has a brother." He touched the edge of the photograph with one finger.
"Not knowing she has a mom."
I put my hand on his shoulder.
He covered it with his.
"We're going to fix this," I said.
He nodded.
But when he looked up at me, his jaw was set in a way I recognized — the same expression he wore every year when he chose the lily and carried it to the grave.
Determined.
Careful.
Unwilling to let the weight of it show until he was alone.
My son had been grieving his sister for fifteen years.
He was done grieving.
My phone rang.
I looked at the screen.
Dora.
The three of us stared at it.
It rang four times.
Five.
Then stopped.
A text arrived immediately after.
*Logan's father told me you've been asking questions.
Call me back.
We need to talk before you do something you can't undo.*
May you like
Logan read it over my shoulder.
"She knows," he said.
