The cruelty of that sentence took my breath away.
Tyler whispered, “Dad…”
“No,” Mark said. “If we’re telling everything, then we’re telling everything.”
He faced me.
“You’ve changed since Dad died.”
Of all the things he could have said, that one almost broke me.
“Of course I changed.”
“You’re suspicious. Emotional. You forget things.”
“My husband of forty-three years died.”
“And you were alone.”
“Yes.”
“We moved in because you needed help.”
I stared at him.
“That is not why you moved in.”
Mark looked away.
We both remembered.
His consulting business had failed.
He and Lisa were four months behind on their mortgage.
I had offered my home because he was my son.
Because Richard had been dead eleven months and the upstairs bedrooms were empty.
Because I thought rescuing my child, even at forty-one, was still part of being his mother.
Lisa stepped into the room.
“We never said you were insane.”
I held up the folder.
“What exactly would you call this?”
“A precaution.”
Tyler made a sound somewhere between a laugh and a sob.
“Tell her about the papers.”
Lisa closed her eyes.
Mark whispered, “Jesus Christ.”
My heart started hammering.
“What papers?”
Tyler reached into the back of the drawer.
He removed a second folder.
Black.
Thinner.
Mark crossed the room.
I snatched it first.
Inside was a copy of my property deed.
A recent appraisal.
A document titled:
APPLICATION FOR HOME EQUITY LINE OF CREDIT.
Amount requested:
$480,000.
My vision blurred.
I sat down.
The application listed my address.
My property.
My estimated equity.
And at the bottom of the page was my name.
Written in handwriting that looked very much like mine.
But wasn’t.
Eleanor Whitmore.
For a while, nobody spoke.
I heard Richard’s old wall clock ticking behind me.
He had bought that clock at an estate sale in 1989.
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
Forty-three years of marriage.
One dead husband.
One son.
One house.
And a signature that somebody had practiced carefully enough to steal all three from me.
I looked at Mark.
“Did you forge my name?”
He said nothing.
“Did you forge my name?”
Lisa answered.
“The loan was never approved.”
I turned toward her.
“I didn’t ask if it was approved.”
“It never went through.”
“Did he forge my name?”
Mark sat down heavily.
“We were desperate.”
That was his confession.
Not yes.
But worse.
We were desperate.
I stared at my son.
“How much?”
He frowned.
“What?”
“How much debt are you in?”
Lisa looked away.
Mark said, “It’s complicated.”
“How much?”
