Madison’s confidence flickered.
Jake was still holding the page bearing what was supposed to be his signature.
His face had gone gray.
“I did not sign this,” he said again.
Madison turned toward him.
“You signed the closing package.”
“I signed a purchase agreement and renovation documents.
I did not sign an application for a one-hundred-and-eighty-five-thousand-dollar equity loan.”
His phone buzzed in his hand.
He glanced down and opened a message from the bank.
A fraud review had placed a temporary restriction on an account connected to the loan.
“Where is the money?” he asked.
Madison’s fingers tightened around the stem of her wineglass.
“Do not do this in front of them,” she said.
“In front of whom?” Jake asked.
“The people who apparently stole the down payment? Or the woman whose name was forged?”
My father stepped between them.
“Nobody stole anything.
Your mother and I managed the trust.
We moved money where the family needed it.”
I opened the folder to the first timeline.
My grandmother Eleanor had created the trust eleven years earlier.
She had never trusted my parents with unrestricted access to money, but she had believed they could follow written instructions.
The trust allowed them to act as temporary custodians while I completed graduate school and established my career.
Their authority ended automatically when I turned thirty.
At that point, control of the trust property was supposed to transfer to me.
My thirtieth birthday had passed fourteen months before Madison’s fake closing.
