PART 2 I stared at that photocopy for a long time. Jolie. My little sister. Wearing her hair the way I wear mine. Holding a driver’s license with my name on it. The woman laughing in the background of Neil’s call. “Is that her?” Of course it was. Carmen Felton sat down on my front steps and put her face in her hands.
“We paid four hundred and twenty thousand dollars for this house,” she said. “Our whole savings.” “I’m so sorry,” I said. “None of this is your fault.”
I called the police from my own driveway. Then I called a real estate attorney whose name I found in thirty seconds of searching. She asked me one question first.
“Do you have proof you were out of the country on the closing date?” “A passport stamp, a GPS log, six witnesses, and a flight itinerary.”
“Then that deed is void,” she said. “A forged signature can’t transfer a house. Not to anyone.” It took the police nine days to put it together.
Three months earlier, Jolie had walked into the DMV, told them she was me, and said she’d lost her license. We look so much alike that the clerk took her photo and printed a new one. With my name. And her face.
Neil had been planning this since summer. He’d been sleeping with my sister since spring.
The house sold for $420,000. After the mortgage, there was $183,000 left. It went into a new bank account in Neil’s name.
They’d booked a condo in Scottsdale. They were moving there with my children at the end of the month. Neil had already enrolled Hudson and Bella in a school there.
Without telling me.
The detectives froze the bank account before they could move the money.
Neil and Jolie were arrested on the same afternoon. Forgery, identity theft, theft by deception, and filing false documents. Jolie was also charged for the fake driver’s license.
My children came home with me that night. I held Bella while she slept, and Hudson wouldn’t let go of my sleeve.
“Dad said you weren’t coming back,” Hudson whispered. “He said you liked rocks more than us.”
“Never,” I told him. “Not for one second.”
The court voided the sale. The Feltons’ money came back to them through the title insurance company. Carmen sent me a card. “We hope you get to keep every memory in that house.”
We did.
The judge gave me full custody. Neil was ordered to stay away from the children until his criminal case was over. He pleaded guilty in the spring.
Jolie’s lawyer asked me to write a letter to the judge asking for leniency.
I didn’t write it.
I still go into the field. Less often now. And when I do, my mother moves into the guest room and stays with the kids.
Last month, before a trip to Alaska, Hudson handed me a small rock he’d painted.
It said “COME HOME” in purple letters.
It lives in my backpack now. I take it everywhere.
THE END.
