My father threw me out on my eighteenth birthday, stole the $3,000 I’d saved from working after school, and used it for my stepbrother. Nine days later, while I was digging through a restaurant dumpster for something to eat, a stranger in an expensive suit called my name and told me my supposedly dead grandfather had left me everything. But there was one condition nobody had warned me about.

My grandfather had continued contributing.

But the statement showed that the account had been closed three weeks before my birthday.

The balance had been transferred to another account.

I read the destination number.

“Where did this go?”

Eleanor shook her head.

“I don’t know.”

At the bottom of the page was a note in Richard’s handwriting:

Transfer authorized by the beneficiary upon reaching majority. Signature required.

My signature.

I looked at the date.

The transfer had been processed six days before my eighteenth birthday.

“I didn’t sign this.”

Eleanor stepped closer.

“Are you certain?”

“I have never seen this document.”

A photocopy of the transfer form was clipped behind the statement.

The signature appeared to be mine.

But it wasn’t.

The letters looked like my name, yet the loops were too careful, the lines too stiff. Someone had copied my signature from a school form or a bank document.