Preston turned his computer toward me. “The signature on this amendment reads Sandra Prescott. A salesman named Doyle notarized it here, but he left the company last spring.” I placed my own signature beside the document. The loops were wrong. The slant was too steep. After thirty-one years comparing handwriting at the assessor’s office, I knew immediately that someone had forged my name.

Before I could ask another question, Preston scrolled farther down. “There’s a phone number attached to that driver,” he said. “And it belongs to your daughter-in-law.” Then the glass doors opened behind me. Brooke walked in, pale and frightened, with a man wearing blue hospital scrubs beside her. A cardiac surgeon’s badge hung from his neck. He looked directly at me and said, “Mrs. Prescott, please let me explain before you call anyone.”

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