Chapter 5 - THE SIGNATURE I GAVE AWAY
“I never authorized four hundred thirty thousand dollars,” I said.
Rios didn’t accuse me. That was worse. She simply asked, “Then why is your signature there?”
I remembered a summer night fourteen years earlier. My father, Frank Reed, had come to my apartment with a folder and a desperate look.
“Ethan’s making trouble,” he’d said. “I need you to witness routine closeout documents before the auditors come.”
I was twenty-four. My father was my hero. I signed without reading.
Now those signatures sat beneath payments to companies that appeared to exist only on paper.
“Dad told me it was paperwork,” I said. “He told me I was helping the family.”
Rios photographed the pages. “Someone wanted an honest witness attached to dishonest transactions.”
I hated hearing myself described as honest. Honesty would have required looking at what I signed.
That afternoon I moved Lily to Mrs. Alvarez’s place while a locksmith changed our doors. I filed for a protective order and arranged an appointment with a child trauma counselor. Lily agreed to go only after I promised I would wait right outside the room.
At five, my mother, Ruth, appeared on the porch. She looked at the police cruiser down the street and gripped her purse.
“I heard about Vanessa,” she said. “You need to stop digging.”
“You knew Emily was investigating Ethan?”
Ruth went pale. “Daniel—”
“Did you know he was alive?”
She leaned against the railing. “Your father made me promise.”
“Promise what?”
May you like
She opened her purse. Inside was an old envelope addressed to me in Ethan’s handwriting. It had never been mailed.
“I’ve kept this for thirteen years,” she whispered. “And last March, Ethan came back to ask if you’d finally read it.”
