Chapter 8 - THE DEAD WOMAN’S SIGNATURE
Ethan stared at the notary stamp as if it might change if he looked long enough.
It didn’t.
His aunt Patricia had died from cancer the previous year.
Yet her name appeared on a document created months after her funeral.
Suddenly, this was no longer a controlling mother interfering in our marriage.
Someone had falsified a legal document.
Ethan sat down slowly.
“I don’t understand.”
I did.
Or at least I understood enough.
“Your mother expected nobody to question her.”
He shook his head.
“She wouldn’t forge Aunt Patricia’s name.”
“Last night you would have said she wouldn’t forge yours.”
He didn’t answer.
Dana helped us contact the hospital’s legal-services referral line.
By early afternoon, I was speaking with a family attorney named Lena Brooks.
I sent her photographs of the documents.
She called back twenty minutes later.
“Do not sign anything Sylvia gives you,” she said. “Do not give her original identification documents for the child. And change passwords on financial accounts you can lawfully access.”
Ethan overheard.
“This sounds insane.”
Lena replied calmly.
“Mr. Donnelly, forged signatures are insane.”
That shut him up.
Mia improved enough that evening for the doctor to discuss discharging us the next morning if her lab results continued moving in the right direction.
For the first time in twenty-four hours, I allowed myself to imagine taking my baby home.
Then another problem arrived.
Our banking app locked me out.
I tried again.
Password incorrect.
I looked at Ethan.
“Did you change this?”
“No.”
He checked his own phone.
He was locked out too.
We called the bank.
After identity verification, the representative told Ethan a security change had been requested that afternoon.
“What change?”
“A request to restrict online access pending review of account ownership.”
“Who requested it?”
The representative hesitated.
“I’m limited in what I can disclose.”
Ethan’s jaw tightened.
“Was it my mother?”
Another pause.
“There is a power-of-attorney document attached to one account.”
Ethan stood so fast the chair scraped backward.
“I never gave my mother power of attorney.”
I felt a wave of nausea.
The representative transferred us to fraud prevention.
Thirty minutes later, we learned the document had been uploaded nine months earlier.
It gave Sylvia authority over one investment account.
Again, Ethan’s signature appeared.
Again, he insisted it was false.
But this time there was something different.
The bank had retained the IP address used to upload the file.
The city associated with it was not Sylvia’s hometown.
It was ours.
And Ethan recognized the street location immediately.
“That’s my office.”
May you like
He went completely still.
Someone had uploaded a forged power of attorney from inside Ethan’s workplace.
