Chapter 5 - THE SIGNATURE THAT WASN’T MINE
I stared at my forged signature until the letters blurred.
Anna Mercer.
A perfect imitation.
Almost.
Whoever copied it had made the capital A too narrow.
Grandma taught me cursive when I was eight. She always teased me because my A looked like a sailboat.
Dad knew that.
He simply assumed nobody else would notice.
Mr. Ellis photographed every page without touching the originals.
“This appears to be a consent agreement,” he said.
“It’s the document I refused to sign.”
At eighteen, Dad had placed it on our kitchen table.
He told me Grandma wanted to transfer the lake property into his company and needed my approval because she had previously placed a future interest in my name.
I refused.
He called me disloyal.
Then he took my phone, emptied my bedroom onto the driveway, and changed the locks.
Now the document contained my forged consent.
Dad had gotten what he wanted anyway.
Or thought he had.
Ellis read the final page.
“Interesting.”
“What?”
“This document was witnessed by two people.”
One name belonged to Dad’s longtime accountant, Harold Pike.
The second made my stomach twist.
Melissa Mercer.
My stepmother.
That night, Melissa called me.
Her voice sounded small.
“Anna, please don’t hang up.”
“You witnessed my signature.”
“No.”
“Your name is there.”
“I know.”
I waited.
She started crying.
“Richard used to bring papers home and tell me where to sign. I didn’t read them.”
“That doesn’t make it better.”
“I know.”
There was no argument in her voice.
Only exhaustion.
Then she said, “I have something you need.”
She asked me to meet her at a twenty-four-hour diner outside town.
When I arrived, she was sitting in a back booth with a banker’s box beside her.
She pushed it toward me.
“I started keeping copies three years ago.”
“Why?”
“Because I realized he was lying to me too.”
Inside were tax returns, contracts, handwritten notes, and copies of canceled checks.
Then I found a sealed envelope in Grandma’s handwriting.
ANNA ONLY.
My throat tightened.
“How did you get this?”
“Your grandmother gave it to me.”
I stared at her.
“When?”
“Three days before she died.”
That made no sense.
Grandma knew Melissa had supported Dad for years.
“Why would she trust you?”
Melissa looked toward the diner window.
“Because I finally told her what Richard had done.”
I opened the envelope.
Inside was a single key and a handwritten note.
Anna,
If you are reading this, Richard has already lied about the will.
Go to Union Federal Bank.
Box 317.
Do not take your father.
Do not take Ellis.
Go with Blake.
May you like
I read the final sentence twice.
Grandma had trusted my half-brother with something she had hidden from everyone else.
