PART 2 — THE SIGNATURE SHE WAS NEVER SUPPOSED TO USE
For several seconds, nobody moved.
The only sound in the dining room was the faint ticking of the old clock above the doorway.
Melissa sat perfectly still.
Mom’s hand remained on the property deed.
And I stared at my sister, trying to understand the sentence I had just heard.
**“Because six months ago, I discovered what your sister had been secretly doing with my signature.”**
“What does that mean?” I finally asked.
Melissa answered before Mom could.
“It means nothing.”
Her voice came out too quickly.
Too sharply.
She stood and reached toward the papers.
“Mom is confused. She’s seventy now. She probably saw something she misunderstood.”
Mom’s expression changed.
Not dramatically.
That wasn’t her way.
My mother had spent most of her life absorbing other people’s sharp words without returning them. She had raised two daughters, buried a husband, survived financial uncertainty, and somehow remained the person who apologized when someone else stepped on her foot.
But now she looked at Melissa with a quiet steadiness I had rarely seen.
“I know exactly what I saw.”
Melissa stopped.
