Inside sat a stack of stapled legal papers stamped with official red Cook County seals.

“I spent three hours at the recorder’s office this morning checking those stamps,” Sarah said.

She reached into the folder, took out a four-page document, and pushed it across the wooden desk to me.

“What am I looking at?” I asked.

“That’s a quitclaim deed signed and recorded in October of twenty twenty,” Sarah said.

I lifted the document and held it under the desk lamp.

My mother’s name was typed on the first line as the grantor.