The money had gone to Willamina. Grantham called the payments loans. Not one dollar had come back. The transfers had kept Willamina’s catering company alive — the same business Finanella had propped up for years because she refused to let its polished storefront close, no matter how badly it struggled behind the scenes.

Grantham had authorized the payments from an account funded mainly by my earnings. He never asked me. He never told me. He took money I earned while traveling away from my children and quietly redirected it to the same sister who mocked me for having it.

As painful as that was, it was not the worst. Deeper in the records, Barnaby uncovered a notarized quitclaim deed dated eighteen months earlier. The document attempted to transfer a ten-percent ownership interest in our house — the house my father had helped me buy — to Finanella Thorn.

My signature appeared at the bottom.

I had never signed it.

For a long time I sat in Barnaby’s conference room staring at the page. The signature looked similar to mine. Someone unfamiliar with my handwriting might have accepted it.