Statements taken.
Dad was formally instructed to leave.
Olivia and Susan left voluntarily.
David was already gone with the children.
Dad finally walked out carrying the same bottle of champagne he had opened inside my house.
He left almost everything else behind.
The boxes.
The toys.
The photographs.
The suitcases.
After the sheriff left, Ethan called me.
“You okay?”
“No.”
“Good answer.”
Then he told me he had found something.
Months earlier, Dad had emailed me what he called insurance paperwork.
I remembered it.
He claimed his accountant needed confirmation that I had received a repayment agreement after James died.
I had electronically signed the final page.
The signature field had never been locked.
Someone later extracted that signature.
Michael compared it to the signature on the fraudulent deed.
It wasn’t similar.
It was identical.
Dad hadn’t imitated my signature.
He had copied a real one.
Then investigators checked the notary.
The deed claimed my signature had been witnessed by a Nevada notary named Patricia Sloan.
Patricia Sloan had never met me.
She had never notarized anything for me.
Her stamp had apparently been copied too.
Within days, the investigation expanded.
Summit Crest froze every account it could reach that was connected to the $480,000.
That was when Olivia began calling me.
Thirty-seven times.
I answered the thirty-eighth.
Her first words were,
