The Things We Signed
Chapter 06 - The Things We Signed
The first document Rebecca spread across the dining-room table was an attendance sheet dated the previous month. Twenty-three names were listed in a single neat column. Beside each was a signature, including that of John Weaver, deceased in 2008.
“It was filed with the county clerk as supporting evidence of resident approval,” she said. “If a person who died eighteen years ago signed it, the rest is worth questioning.”
Damian stared at the page. “Who filed it?”
“Anthony's office.”
The dining room had hosted wedding rehearsals and charity luncheons and one extraordinary argument over a Thanksgiving turkey. Now it looked like a municipal archive. I liked it better that way.
Rebecca explained that people lost houses through complicated paperwork long before anyone arrived with a moving truck. Sometimes the first step was an innocent-looking consent form. Sometimes a bill sent to the wrong address. Sometimes a meeting announced in a place nobody visited.
“Are you saying we can stop the sale?” I asked.
“I'm saying we may be able to seek an emergency injunction. But I need originals, or testimony from someone who can explain how these false records were created.”
“And Hannah has them,” Damian said.
“Maybe. The watch might tell us where.”
He had hired a watchmaker named Mr. Chen, who ran a shop in Flushing and considered most expensive watches less interesting than broken alarm clocks. Mr. Chen arrived with a magnifying loupe and a battered leather case. Mia sat beside him and offered to share her crackers.
He declined politely. Then he turned the watch over and found a tiny pin beneath the winding stem.
“This is a second back,” he said. “Made by hand. Old work.”
He used a fine tool, lifted a narrow silver plate, and revealed a brass key no longer than my thumbnail. Beside it was a folded piece of onion-skin paper, stained brown at the edges.
The note contained a number, 218, and three words: CENTRAL. SOUTH. FRIDAY.
Mr. Chen photographed everything before touching the contents. Rebecca called an investigator she trusted and asked him to accompany us. This, I learned, is the difference between a mystery in a book and a real one. In a book, somebody always finds the right key and runs. In life, you spend an hour making telephone calls and arguing about parking.
We drove to Central Station after lunch. The old south lockers had been removed years ago, but a row of rental boxes remained in a private parcel office across the street. Number 218 belonged to Victor Reed.
The clerk demanded identification. Vittorio had left a notarized authorization in Hannah's name, but Hannah was missing. Rebecca negotiated while I watched commuters carry paper cups and overnight bags through the revolving doors.
At last the clerk agreed to let us examine the box under the supervision of a court officer Rebecca had arranged to meet us. The contents were photographed and logged before anybody took them out.
There was a ledger wrapped in a tea towel, a packet of photographs, and a blue children's mitten. I recognized the mitten. Hannah had worn it when she was little, before losing its partner in a grocery-store parking lot. For years I'd kept the remaining one in a drawer, until she asked to take it when she moved away.
I held it against my palm. I could see the scar on my thumb from the winter I'd knitted the cuff too tightly and had to undo it three times.
Rebecca found letters from residents refusing to sell. Some were dated years earlier than the supposed votes. Others were written by people whose names had later appeared on consent forms. Bernice's letter, in her careful handwriting, began: I wish to remain in my home for as long as I am able.
There were receipts for repairs to houses the trust had declared uninhabitable. There were internal memos showing a company owned by Vincent had purchased debt attached to those same houses, making their supposed decline profitable to him.
Then Rebecca pulled out the document Hannah must have been searching for: the original 1998 charter establishing the trust, signed by four founders. It stipulated that the houses were to be kept affordable for surviving factory workers and their families, not sold for private development without an independent vote.
One founder was June Mercer.
I stared at my own name, and something I hadn't thought about in decades returned to me. Vittorio had brought a paper to my kitchen in 1998 and asked me to sign it. He told me he was helping the factory widows. I was thirty-six, working long hours and raising Hannah alone. I read the first page, signed, and asked him to buy better coats for the children that winter.
“I did sign one,” I said softly.
Rebecca looked up. “This one?”
“Yes. I remember the day. Hannah spilled grape juice on the tablecloth.”
The signature was mine. The paper was not a fake. I had been a trustee all those years without ever being invited to a meeting.
A worse memory followed. A few years later, Anthony had brought me a stack of papers after dinner. He said they were routine records the trust needed for its files. I signed where he marked with yellow tabs. I was tired and eager to get home.
“There's something else,” I told Rebecca. “I may have signed documents I didn't read.”
She didn't scold me. “Tell me when, and tell me as accurately as you can.”
I loved her a little for that.
Near the bottom of the box lay a photograph of the Romano family at a summer picnic. Damian was perhaps ten, smiling with both front teeth missing. His mother stood beside Vittorio, beautiful and unsmiling. I was in the background holding a bowl of potato salad. Hannah, six years younger than Damian, sat on the grass at Vittorio's feet.
On the back, in Vittorio's writing, was a line that hurt more than I expected: My children, both in the same sunlight.
“He kept this,” Damian said.
“Yes.”
We stood there unable to decide whether it was evidence of love or further evidence of a man's extraordinary ability to excuse himself.
The investigator called from the hallway. He had found a second name on the rental account, added just two days earlier: Hannah Mercer. She had been there at six forty that morning.
Alive. At least she had been alive that morning.
When we returned to the house, Anthony was standing in the entrance hall, flanked by two men in dark overcoats. A police officer waited behind them.
Anthony held up a warrant. “I'm sorry, Damian. This is unpleasant for everybody.”
May you like
The warrant named Hannah as a suspect in the theft of trust funds. Under the list of documents supporting the allegation was a sworn statement bearing a familiar signature.
Mine.
