The Signature I Taught Him to Read

And I told him the truth.

I had not taught him how to forge.

I had taught him how to detect a forgery, which is the opposite thing, the honest thing, the skill of the person who protects rather than the person who steals.

That he had turned a lesson in integrity into an instrument of fraud was not a failure of my teaching.

It was a choice he made, one letter at a time, fourteen times, at my kitchen table.

I left him with that.