She kept a record room, filing cabinets sorted by year, filled with old official forms, stolen certificates, forged consents, and withdrawal requests.

And in a hidden wall safe, inside a smaller metal box, they found the core of it: the proof of how she had done the forgeries.

I will not describe her method, because it does not deserve preserving and because no one reading this needs to learn it; it is enough to say that she had practiced, patiently, over and over, until she could copy a grieving stranger’s signature well enough to fool a county clerk.

Among those practice sheets, the investigators found my own name, written again and again down a page. Lucas.