I was trying to sell the farmhouse. Even with the water damage, the land was valuable. It was my only asset. I needed the money to pay off the fraudulent debts and start over.
I sat in the office of a local real estate attorney, Mr. Sterling. He was an old friend of my grandfather’s, a man who smelled of pipe tobacco and old leather.
He pulled up the deed on his computer, squinting.
“Mrs. Bennett,” he said slowly. “You can’t sell the farmhouse.”
“Why not? It’s in both our names. If he abandoned it, I can petition for full ownership.”
“It’s not in your name at all,” Sterling said, turning the screen toward me. “According to the registry of deeds, you signed a quitclaim deed three weeks ago. You transferred full ownership to an LLC based in Delaware. That LLC then sold the property to a developer last week.”
“I never signed anything,” I said, my voice rising. “I was nine months pregnant. I was on bed rest. I barely left the bedroom.”
“Is this your signature?”
I looked at the digital scan. It was a scrawl that looked like mine, but slightly off. The loop on the ‘L’ was too wide.
“That’s a forgery,” I said. “And who notarized this?”
Sterling pointed to a stamp. “A notary in Montpelier. A Mr. Davis.”
I remembered Mr. Davis. He was a friend of Michael’s. They played golf together. They drank scotch in our living room.
“He stole the house,” I whispered. “He stole everything.”
But as I sat there, consumed by rage, a memory flickered. My grandfather.
My grandfather had passed away two years prior. He was a wealthy man, eccentric and private. He had left me his estate—a sprawling historic mansion on the lake, filled with antiques and land. It was valued at over a million dollars. It was supposed to be Ethan’s legacy.
Michael had always been obsessed with that house. He wanted to sell it, to “reinvest” the money into high-yield stocks. I had refused. I wanted to keep it in the family.
“Mr. Sterling,” I said, a cold dread washing over me. “Can you check the deed on my grandfather’s estate? The Lakeview property.”
Sterling typed for a moment. His face went pale. He took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose.
“Oh, dear,” he murmured.
“Tell me.”
“It was sold,” Sterling said quietly. “Two days before Michael left. For $1.2 million. Cash sale. The seller is listed as… Michael Bennett, acting as Power of Attorney for Laura Bennett.”
“I never gave him Power of Attorney,” I said, gripping the arms of the chair so hard my knuckles turned white.
“There’s a document here,” Sterling said, printing it out. “Signed by you. Notarized by… Mr. Davis.”
I looked at the paper. Another forgery. But this one was sloppy. The date on the signature was a day I was in the hospital for a prenatal checkup. I had logs. I had doctor’s notes. I had proof that I was physically not in the room when this document was allegedly signed.
Michael hadn’t just emptied our checking account. He had stolen my inheritance. He had stolen my son’s future.
And he had done it with the help of a corrupt notary, assuming I would be too broken, or perhaps too dead from the cold, to notice.
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