Part 2: The Reckoning
By midnight, I had canceled every recurring transfer. The $5,000 monthly lifeline was gone. I revoked their access to my accounts and called my attorney — the woman who had handled my husband’s estate — and told her to review everything.
Then I found it. A withdrawal request for $250,000, bearing my signature. Almost mine. Not quite. The loop on the ‘y’ was wrong — too careful, too studied. My hand had never written that letter that way in sixty-eight years.
I sat at my kitchen table until dawn, the forged paper beside my cold coffee. Grief arrived before anger — because the signature meant my son had looked at my name and seen only a key.