Josephine's Other Name
Chapter 04 - Josephine's Other Name
There was a moment after the date was read aloud when the kitchen at St. Agnes seemed to empty of sound. Somebody's kettle clicked off. A bus moved past the window, its brakes sighing at the corner. Adeline could hear Mrs. Kaplan breathing through her nose. She had spent years begging people to look at one document from her mother's life; now she had a document that had been signed after the end of it.
Helen March explained that the false signature did not, by itself, undo the entire transfer. There were filing deadlines, complicated chains of ownership, people who would claim to have purchased in good faith. Adeline had expected outrage to be enough. The lawyer's quiet discussion of documents and courts felt almost indecent. Then she understood why those who stole from poor people preferred paperwork. It could outlast the person who had been harmed.
"We'll request an emergency injunction before Friday," Helen said. "But we need a witness who handled the old trust records." Enzo put Josephine's photograph on the table. Around it the residents leaned in, remembering things: the small woman who repaired coats, the woman who always insisted that the kitchen's cash box be counted twice, the woman who returned Christmas donations if the donor demanded photographs. Mrs. Kaplan remembered Josephine bringing her a new bathroom faucet when the landlord refused to fix the old one.
Teresa suddenly pushed back her chair. "She came to my bakery three Tuesdays ago," she said. "Asked me for an almond cookie and a piece of paper. I thought she was lonely." Teresa reached into her purse and took out a receipt on which a telephone number had been written in green ink. "She asked me to call it if I heard somebody speak Evelyn's name again. I haven't, not until now."
Adeline felt heat rise under her collar. "Why didn't you say so last night?"
"Because I knew Josephine as Jo, and I didn't know she was missing. Because I am old, not omniscient." Teresa examined her with a little sadness. "And because somebody once told me to mind my business when your mother died, and I'm ashamed to say I did." She pushed the receipt across the table. The number belonged to St. Catherine's respite center, a small assisted-living residence near Pawtucket.
Ruth Alvarez was informed before they went. She met Adeline, Marisol, and Teresa at the center's entrance and asked its director to confirm whether Josephine was staying there voluntarily. She was, under her maiden name, Moreland. The director, a practical woman with sensible shoes, said Josephine had arrived exhausted and frightened, carrying a cloth shopping bag but no wallet. She had paid in cash for three nights, then stayed because she was afraid to go home.
They found her in the sewing room, holding a button between thumb and forefinger. She was smaller than she appeared in her license photograph, and the bruise beside her temple had turned yellow. Adeline halted in the doorway. It is one thing to know that a person may have been frightened; it is another to see the fear persist after the danger has passed.
Josephine looked at the young woman and began to cry without making a sound. "Evelyn's eyes," she said. "Oh, Lord. I hoped they'd send you somewhere safer than that restaurant."
Adeline sat beside her. "Did you leave the wallet for me?"
"No. I meant to give it to Enzo. I had sewn the note inside because I couldn't trust myself not to throw it away." Josephine swallowed. "I arranged to meet a man who said he worked for Mr. Rinaldi's lawyer. He took my wallet, said he'd make the evidence safe, and told me that if I went to the police, they'd accuse you of stealing it. He knew your address. He knew about the boardinghouse." Her voice shook. "A nice-looking fellow in a gray coat. I thought I'd been clever, slipping away while he looked for his car."
"He dropped it outside the restaurant," Adeline said.
"Then he was trying to make you the thief. I should have guessed."
Ruth asked Josephine to describe the man and her last contact with Preston. She had been threatened with the revival of an old perjury charge, the same charge that had nearly sent her to prison in 2019. Adeline turned to her. "Perjury?"
Josephine gripped the button so tightly her hand trembled. "I swore I saw your mother take cash from the trust office. I saw her carrying a canvas envelope. That part was true. I left out what the envelope held." She looked toward the closed door. "They told me if I didn't testify, my son's care home would lose the place he needed. He lived there until he died last year. I kept thinking I could undo it afterward."
The silence was different now. Adeline had imagined a villain when she pictured the person who'd ruined Evelyn. She had not pictured a tired woman with a bruise near her temple and an old button lodged in her palm. "My mother died with people thinking she was a thief," Adeline said. "You went to her funeral."
"I did." Josephine's voice was barely audible. "She saw me standing by the door that last time we spoke. She didn't ask me to forgive her. She asked whether I'd fed my boy." A tear reached the edge of her chin. "It was the worst kindness anybody ever showed me."
Adeline rose and went to the window. For several minutes she watched a crow shake rain from its wings on the wall outside. Forgiveness was not a switch that could be flipped because the reason for a betrayal was sad. She wanted Josephine to know that. When she returned, she said, "I'll listen. Don't ask me to make it easy."
Josephine nodded. From her handbag she took an envelope containing a small brass key and a storage receipt dated eight years earlier. "Your mother kept two sets of books. The published accounts were altered. The real entries are in a blue ledger. I was supposed to deliver it before the fire. I never got the courage." She gave the key to Detective Alvarez for safekeeping.
Enzo arrived only after Ruth said Josephine consented to see him. He stood by the sewing table and looked at her as though she were a piece of his childhood returning from the dead. "Jo," he said. She put her fingertips against his sleeve and said, "You have your mother's shoulders when you're ashamed. She stood exactly like that."
He told her about the forged transfer, the tenants, and the coming hearing. Josephine listened, then corrected a date in the paperwork. The sale had not begun in 2021, she said. It began in the winter of 2019, when someone inside Rinaldi Holdings ordered the residents out of the damaged rooms, even though the heating system could have been repaired. "The money wasn't gone," she whispered. "The people who needed it were still there."
May you like
Adeline asked who had issued the order. Josephine's hands went still over the button. She looked at Enzo, then at his watch, as if considering how long a man could live inside the wrong story.
"The authorization came from your office, Enzo. And your signature is on it."
