Officer Hayes did not ask me to repeat myself.
She looked at my mother first, then my father, as if checking whether either of them understood the weight of what I had just said.
“Your signature was already on the mortgage paperwork?”
I nodded carefully.
Even that small movement sent pain down my shoulder.
“On a borrower authorization near the bottom of the stack.
I never signed it.
I never authorized anyone to sign for me.”
My father stepped closer to the bed.
“You’re sure?”
I turned toward him.
“Dad, I know my own signature.”
Officer Hayes reached for the radio clipped near her shoulder.
Outside the glass window, Trent had reappeared.
He was saying something to the security guard, gesturing toward my room like he had every right to walk through the door.
Then he saw Officer Hayes speaking into her radio.
His expression changed.
Not dramatically.
Trent was too controlled for that.
But the smugness disappeared.
He stopped talking.
Officer Hayes requested that officers secure the garage at my parents’ home and preserve every mortgage document on the folding table.
She specifically told them not to let anyone remove, rearrange, or destroy anything.
Trent turned away from the window.
“Don’t let him leave,” I said.
Officer Hayes looked toward the door.
“Hospital security already knows.”
My mother sank into the chair beside me.
“Chloe wouldn’t forge your name.”
It was the first thing she said after hearing me accuse her daughter.
Not Are you all right?
Not I believe you.
Chloe wouldn’t.
I looked at the sling holding my injured arm against my body.
“She watched Trent do this.”
My mother covered her mouth.
My father stared at the floor.
A few minutes later, another officer entered and quietly spoke to Hayes near the door.
Trent had been detained downstairs after attempting to leave the hospital.
The officer had also contacted the patrol unit headed to my parents’ house.
Officer Hayes pulled her chair closer.
“I need you to tell me exactly what you saw on that form.”
So I did.
I described where the page had been in the stack.
I described the authorization language I had managed to glimpse and the signature near the bottom.
I explained why it had caught my eye: whoever copied my signature had reproduced an unusual long stroke I made through the final letter of my last name.
It was a habit I had never thought about until I saw somebody imitate it.
Then I remembered something else.
“Chloe moved another page over it after she noticed me looking.”
Hayes wrote that down.
“Did she say anything?”
“She said, ‘Just finish what you already agreed to.'”
My father’s head lifted.
“You never agreed.”
“No.”
He turned toward my mother.
