She turned to her mother, and I don’t think she even realized she was saying it out loud.
“I told you we shouldn’t use those forms.”
Dolores closed her eyes.
Sandra didn’t say a word. She just wrote something on her legal pad.
Colleen started talking fast then. It was only paperwork. It was only a few pieces. The families got paid. Everyone does it. I let her finish, because I wanted to hear whether she would say my son’s name even once.
She didn’t.
“The marriage is over,” I said.
They left with two suitcases that afternoon. The rest of their things were boxed by movers, cataloged, and checked by investigators first.
The case took a long time. A forensic document examiner found that my signature had been lifted from a real report and copied onto at least four forgeries. Investigators searched a storage unit in Pflugerville leased to Whitmore Estate Services. Curtis was brought in for questioning, and then again with a lawyer.
