Chapter 2 - My Name in Someone Else’s Hand
For five full seconds, I stared at the signature.
It was good.
Too good.
The loop in the M was mine. The second stroke leaned left. The tail at the end of my last name faded exactly the way mine did when I wrote too fast.
But I had not written it.
Ethan stood beside me now.
“Mom?”
I shut the folder.
“Go wash up for dinner.”
He did not move.
“Is it bad?”
“Yes.”
“Are you scared?”
I almost lied.
Then I stopped.
“A little.”
He nodded, as if that answer made more sense than bravery.
“Me too.”
That hurt more than anything Adrian had said.
I called my attorney, Nora Bell, and sent photos of every page.
She called back in under ninety seconds.
“Do not touch the signature page again.”
“I already touched it.”
“Fine. Put it in a clean sleeve. And, Mara?”
“Yes?”
“Do not confront him.”
“He came here with it.”
“I mean about the forgery.”
I glanced toward the hallway. Ethan was still standing there.
“I understand.”
Nora went quiet.
Then she said, “This changes tomorrow.”
We met at her office at 9:40 that night.
Rain hit the glass walls while her forensic document examiner photographed the settlement under three different lights.
Ethan sat in the corner with apple juice and a math puzzle book he wasn’t solving.
He watched everything.
The examiner, a gray-haired man named Dr. Paul Renner, leaned over the page.
“Interesting.”
“What?” I asked.
“The signature is simulated.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m sure it wasn’t written naturally. Whoever made it used a source sample.”
Nora folded her arms. “Can you prove whose hand did it?”
“Not yet.”
Ethan suddenly spoke.
“The dot is wrong.”
Renner looked at him. “What dot?”
“The dot over the i in Meridian.”
We all looked.
The signature was mine, but the notary acknowledgment below it had a handwritten company name.
Voss Meridian.
The dot over the second i was a tiny slash angled down to the right.
Ethan opened one of the toy boxes Vanessa had mailed him and pulled out a note.
MAYBE THIS LEVEL IS BETTER FOR YOU. — VANESSA
He placed it beside the settlement.
Same slash.
Same pressure.
Same angle.
Renner’s eyebrows rose.
Nora whispered, “Well.”
I looked at Ethan.
He looked embarrassed now, almost sorry.
“I just thought it was weird.”
Nora crouched beside him. “You did good noticing it.”
He frowned. “Dad says noticing weird things is why I’m slow.”
No one in the room answered.
Nora stood up slowly.
Her face had changed.
“Tomorrow,” she said, “we ask the judge for emergency preservation orders.”
My phone buzzed.
Unknown number.
A photo appeared.
It showed Ethan leaving school three days earlier.
Taken from across the street.
Below it was one sentence.
May you like
SIGN BEFORE COURT OR THE BOY BECOMES PART OF THE CASE.
