That was all it allowed. Administrative things. For one specific week.
It didn’t give anyone the right to sell my house. Or mortgage it. Or anything close to that.
Monica leaned across the clothesline. Close enough that I could smell her perfume. Something expensive and floral.
“You have until tomorrow to accept,” she whispered. “After that, neither your little house nor that old woman will be able to protect you.”
She glanced past me, toward the back steps. Toward Opal.
Then she put her sunglasses back on, turned around, and walked back across the grass to the gray sedan.
She left the envelope lying on the lawn.
The car pulled away.
I stood there in the backyard holding the papers, with the sheets snapping on the line beside me.
They hadn’t just faked my signature.
That was the thing I couldn’t stop thinking about. They hadn’t just forged my name on a piece of paper.
