Chapter 6 - THE SIGNATURE
“That isn’t mine.”
Beth pushed the page closer.
“It resembles yours.”
“I didn’t sign it.”
“Then we need the original records.”
I could hear Lily in the next room asking Owen whether canceled weddings meant canceled cake.
My daughter was trying to make the day ordinary.
I was looking at a signature that could make me look guilty.
Beth called the bank’s fraud department while I called Ruiz.
By noon, the property accounts were restricted.
By two, Mason had stopped answering his phone.
At three, Victoria sent me a message.
You’re destroying something you don’t understand.
I forwarded it to Ruiz.
Then another came.
Ask your brother what Caroline wanted to tell you.
I looked across the kitchen.
Owen was washing Lily’s plastic cup.
“What did Caroline want to tell me?”
He turned off the water.
The silence between us was immediate.
“Where did you hear that?”
“Answer me.”
He dried his hands too slowly.
“She called me the week she died.”
“Why?”
“She thought somebody was taking money from the buildings.”
“And you didn’t tell me?”
“She asked me not to.”
“My wife died, Owen.”
“I know.”
“You knew she was worried about theft, and you let me keep Mason working in her office?”
His face drained.
“She said she was going to handle it. Then she died, and you were barely functioning. I thought—”
“You thought what?”
“That adding some unfinished business would break you.”
I laughed once.
It sounded ugly.
“So you protected me.”
“I made a mistake.”
“You let those people into my house.”
“I didn’t know about Victoria.”
“You knew enough to tell me.”
Lily appeared in the doorway.
We both stopped.
She looked from me to Owen.
“Are you going away too?”
Owen’s face folded.
“No, bug.”
I forced my voice steady.
“Uncle Owen and I are talking.”
She went back to Rosa.
Owen reached into his pocket.
“There’s something else.”
He opened his email.
A message from Caroline.
The subject line read: If I’m wrong, we’ll laugh about this.
Attached was a photograph.
Caroline had taken it through a restaurant window.
Mason sat in a booth.
May you like
Across from him was Victoria.
The date was four months before Victoria supposedly met him for the first time.
