My Father Brought a Locksmith to Sell the Ranch I Bought
We walked out into the cold air of the parking lot. The wind was coming from the north now, carrying the smell of coal smoke from the valley.
Rachel did not wait to get into the truck. She stopped next to my driver-side door and opened the brown envelope.
She pulled out the copy of the green transfer slip and a copy of my original signature card from when I was eighteen years old. She laid them side by side on the hood of my truck.
On the original card, my signature was sharp, the letters slanted to the right, the line thin and quick.
On the transfer slip, the signature was thick. The letters were vertical. The loop on the letter l was wide and clumsy, like someone had drawn it slowly, trying to copy a shape from a small photograph.
“The signature on this transfer is not mine, and it never was,” I said.
Rachel pointed to the date at the top of the transfer slip. December twenty-one.
“Your father took the money three days before he shut the door on you,” Rachel said.
