Chapter 3 - UNIT 402
The storage facility was bathed in harsh fluorescent light. It smelled of industrial cleaner and old cardboard.
My hands trembled slightly as I slid the brass key into the padlock of Unit 402. It clicked open. I rolled the metal door up. The sound echoed down the empty concrete hallway.
I reached for the pull-string lightbulb.
The unit wasn’t filled with excess furniture or marketing materials for the cookbook. It was organized into neat, plastic bins stacked against the far wall. On a small metal folding table in the center of the room sat a laptop, a printer, and a stack of manila folders.
It looked like a makeshift office.
I walked over to the table and opened the top folder. Inside were bank statements. Not for Grant’s LLC, and not for our joint checking account.
They were statements for a trust account in my mother’s name.
My breath caught. My mother had died with very little money. The only thing she left behind was the small house I grew up in, which Grant and I had moved into, and the recipes.
I flipped to the second page. The balance on the account was $150,000.
I stared at the numbers, trying to make sense of the math. Where did this come from?
Beneath the statement was a copy of a second mortgage agreement on my mother’s house. The house we lived in. The house I owned free and clear. The document showed a loan taken out six months ago for $150,000.
I flipped to the signature line.
There, in perfect, looping cursive, was my signature: Anne Joyce Miller.
But I hadn't signed it.
Grant had forged my name to borrow against my childhood home. He had taken the equity my mother worked her entire life to build, and he was using it to fund his new life with Brooke.
I felt a cold sweat break out on my neck. If Grant defaulted on this loan, I would lose the house. I would lose everything.
I reached for the next folder, desperate to see where the money was going.
Before my fingers brushed the cardboard, I heard the heavy roll of a metal door echoing down the hall. Someone had entered the building.
Footsteps approached. Slow, deliberate clicks of heels on concrete.
It wasn't Grant. Grant wore heavy boots.
I quickly shoved the folder back into the pile and stepped behind the stack of plastic bins just as the shadow fell across the threshold of Unit 402.
Brooke stepped into the light. She was still wearing the silk dress from the bookstore.
She walked straight to the table, opened her purse, and pulled out a small, familiar object. She set it down on top of the forged mortgage papers.
It was my mother’s silver rosary.
May you like
The one I thought I had lost at the funeral.
Brooke picked up her phone and dialed. "Grant, I'm at the unit. I have the collateral. Are we doing this or not?"
