I had gone home for my late father’s watch. It was still in the drawer beside my bed, where I’d left it after trying on my dress. I reached for the front door, then heard Daniel say my name through the open kitchen window.
“She’ll notice the folder is gone,” he said.
His mother, Marlene, laughed. “Three more hours, and she can’t back out. Give her the papers after the ceremony.”
They were supposed to be at the hotel. I stood on the porch, unable to move.
“The buyer won’t wait past Monday,” Daniel said. “Hawthorne Title keeps calling. What if she reads the papers?”
“Tell her it’s about combining insurance. She signs everything you put in front of her.”
My father had left me this house. I hadn’t agreed to sell it, and I had never discussed a buyer. I took one step back. The porch board creaked.
Inside, a chair scraped the floor. I ducked behind the hedge as Daniel opened the door and looked down the street. My phone was already in my hand. I called my maid of honor, Rachel.
“Call the hotel,” I whispered. “Tell them the wedding is canceled. Don’t let Daniel near my room.”
“What happened?”
“I’ll explain when I’m somewhere safe.”
Ten minutes later, Rachel confirmed she’d reached the coordinator and the officiant. I texted our guests that the ceremony would not take place. Then I called Hawthorne Title. The receptionist found a file under my address.
“Are you calling about Monday’s closing?” she asked.
My knees nearly gave out. “I’m the owner. I haven’t signed a contract.”
There was a pause. “Ma’am, the contract in this file bears your signature.”
The front door slammed again. Daniel had spotted me through the hedge. He came down the steps with a manila folder tucked under his arm, while the receptionist said something that made me tighten my grip on the phone.
I thought the forged signature was the worst thing in that folder. But Daniel had left one detail in plain sight, and it explained why he needed me standing at the altar before I could see it.
“The buyer is Marlene Price Holdings,” the receptionist said. “Is that someone you know?”
I looked up at Daniel’s mother through the kitchen window. She was watching me now, one hand pressed to the glass.
Daniel stopped at the foot of the steps. “Who are you talking to?”
“The title company.”
For the first time in three years, I saw him without the pleasant expression he wore whenever he wanted me to agree. He reached for my phone. I stepped into the street and shouted my address to the receptionist.
“Please flag the file. My signature is forged. I’m sending you written notice right now.”
She transferred me to the closing manager, who gave me an email address and said the file would be put on hold while they reviewed my claim. Rachel pulled up in her car as I was dictating the notice. I got in and locked the door.
Daniel hit the passenger window with his palm. “You’re destroying our wedding over paperwork?”
Rachel drove away. My hands shook so hard she typed the email while I read it aloud. I included a photograph of my driver’s license and said plainly that I had authorized no sale or transfer. Then we called the police nonemergency line to report suspected forgery.
At Rachel’s apartment, the closing manager sent me copies of the documents. The sale price was $312,000. A nearby house, smaller than mine, had sold for $490,000. Marlene’s company was the buyer. My supposed signature appeared on both the purchase agreement and a power of attorney allowing Daniel to sign closing papers for me.
I had never signed either one.
Then I saw the second page of the power of attorney. It had been notarized six weeks earlier, on the afternoon Daniel drove me to my father’s cemetery. The notary’s name was Ellen Price. Marlene’s sister.
My phone filled with messages from relatives asking why I’d canceled. Daniel sent one himself: We were buying it from you. Mom was going to give you the money after the wedding. Don’t make this a crime.
I showed Rachel. “Why hide it if they meant to pay me?”
She pointed to a line near the bottom of the purchase agreement. The proceeds were directed to an account in my name at a bank I had never used. I called the bank’s fraud department. After verifying my identity, the representative said an account had been opened with my information.
“There’s already a deposit in it,” she said. “From your late father’s estate.”
My father had died fourteen months ago. His estate had been settled. The representative read the amount, and I felt the room tilt.
“Forty-eight thousand dollars,” the representative said.
I knew that number. It was the remainder of my father’s small business account, money his executor had told me was tied up in a disputed invoice. I’d stopped expecting it. Someone had collected it in my name.
“Freeze the account,” I said. “I did not open it or deposit that check.”
She placed a restriction on outgoing transactions and gave me a case number. She couldn’t tell me who had deposited the money, but she could send records to investigators after receiving the proper request. I wrote everything down while Rachel took screenshots of Daniel’s message.
Then I called my father’s executor, a local attorney named Mr. Harris. When I read him the bank name and amount, he went quiet.
“That check was issued eleven days ago,” he said. “The invoice dispute was finally resolved. I mailed it to your house with a letter.”
I had never seen either. Daniel had been staying at my house while we prepared for the wedding, picking up the mail whenever I worked late.
Mr. Harris asked me to forward the sale documents. He recognized the false address on the power of attorney: it was the office of Marlene’s company. He arranged for me to meet a real estate attorney that afternoon and warned me not to go home alone.
