Chapter 3 - The Signature That Wasn't Mine
I slept on the couch with the lights on. By seven, I had called my bank, frozen the credit accounts I could protect, and downloaded the county land records.
There it was: a recorded mortgage naming my home as security for a business loan to Whitcomb Development. My signature appeared on the final page in blue ink. A notary named Vivian Holt had supposedly watched me sign.
On that date, I had been in Cleveland restoring the windows of an old theater. The hotel receipt was still in my inbox.
I called Ryan. He answered on the fifth ring.
"Did you put a loan on my house?"
Silence. Then: "Mom said she'd explain."
"I'm asking you."
"It was temporary. The Eastbank project needed a bridge loan. We were going to pay it back."
"You forged my name."
"Don't say that over the phone."
I stared at the peeling paint above the couch. "You knew."
"Lena, the bank's going to work with us if you stay calm."
That was the second time in twenty-four hours someone had told me to stay calm while explaining how they had robbed me.
My house was mine before I met Ryan. My mother bought it with wages from a hospital laundry room, then fixed it room by room. When she died, she left it to me with a note: Keep a door you can open with your own key.
I called attorney Tessa Navarro, who had handled a contractor dispute for my restoration business.
"Do not confront anyone alone," she said after hearing the story. "Keep the originals. And don't assume a fraudulent recorded lien means the lender owns your house. We can challenge it."
She paused as she examined the emailed paperwork.
"Lena, there's a second signature on this packet."
"Whose?"
May you like
"Your mother's."
My mother had been dead for nine years.
