He was drowning — buried in private debt he had run up chasing that new life, debt that was about to come due, debt he had no way to pay.

And he had found, in my grandmother’s house, the asset that could save him.

All he needed was to get four hundred and fifty thousand dollars of equity out of a property that was legally, entirely mine — which required either my signature, or a convincing forgery of it, and my absence from the house while the paperwork went through.

So that was the plan, laid bare.

Get me out of the house, on a night I was too shattered to think.

Forge my signature on a loan against my own home.