My Brother Answered Questions About The Signature He Bought

Everett's deposition took place in a room with a humming vent and no windows.

There was no auction crowd to charm. There was a court reporter, a pitcher of water, and a stack of numbered exhibits.

He looked at the recorder before he looked at me.

"Is all this necessary?"

"You're under oath," his lawyer reminded him.

Nora began with the easy dates. Mother's death. The appraisal visit. The sale. The probate application.

Then she placed the signature attachment in front of him.

The document examiner's report had found that Mother's signature on the will was a copied image from the museum permission letter. The strange gray curve came from the clipped stamp beside it. My supposed release used an image taken from my treatment estimate.

The examiner had matched the files as well as the marks on paper.

He had also explained his limits. He could not tell us what Mother would have wanted that September. He could show that the will did not carry a fresh handwritten signature from her.

Everett's lawyer had received the report and all its comparison images before the deposition. There was no surprise folder waiting under Nora's chair. My brother had time to read each page.

Still, when she set the first exhibit before him, he looked offended that someone had kept it.

"Did you receive this attachment?" Nora asked.

"Apparently."

"Did you open it?"

"I don't recall."

She handed him his reply.

Looks better. Use that one.

He drank some water.

"Pike said he was restoring a damaged document."

"Did you have a damaged original?"

"He had the papers."

"Did you ever see your mother sign this will?"

"No."

He had said it so quietly that the court reporter asked him to repeat it.

The two supposed witnesses had already given sworn statements. One was Pike's former assistant, Owen Ladd. The other was his part-time bookkeeper, June Vail. Both denied witnessing Mother's signature. Both identified old employment forms from which their signatures had been copied.

Owen had brought his own records. He had left Pike's shop four months before the date printed on the will.

"He liked saving scans," Owen had told Nora. "He called it an office shortcut."

Nora showed Everett the email that had traveled with the draft.

Use September 6 as discussed. Her older signature will read more clearly.

Everett had replied with instructions to give him the lenses and name him executor.

"That reflected what she wanted," he said.

"Who told you that?"

"She was my mother."

Nora let the silence stand.

Then she introduced a different email, from long before Mother's death.

I recognized the attachment. It was a scan of the trust summary Mother had sent both of us in 2009.

Everett's reply was one line.

So Ilana gets the glass, and we split what is left?

Mother had answered yes.

My throat hurt.

I had spent weeks wondering if he misunderstood. His own saved mail answered that.

"Did you receive the trust summary?" Nora asked.

"I thought she could change it."

"Did you have any later trust amendment?"

"No."

"Any document transferring the lenses out of the trust?"

"No."

"Why did you remove Schedule A from the records sent to Maren Cole?"

His lawyer leaned forward.

Nora laid down another message. Pike had asked what to include in the buyer packet. Everett had written, Leave out the museum schedule. It will only start another argument with my sister.

"That wasn't about ownership," Everett said.

"What was it about?"

He looked at me then.

"You wouldn't sell. You would sit there dusting it until you died."

Nobody spoke for a moment.

I saw the whole plan in that answer. He had known about the trust and counted on a new will to push it aside. He had needed papers that made my refusal seem like nothing.

After the deposition, he caught me near the elevator. Nora stood a few feet away.

"Pike made it sound simple," he said.

"You gave him the terms."

"I had debts. The sale would've fixed them."

"With something you knew wasn't yours."

He rubbed his forehead.

"You always had something she needed. I had to bring her something impressive."

For a moment, he sounded like the boy who brought home books too hard for him and left them open on the sofa.

I felt sorry for that boy.

I did not sign away the collection for him.

"You could have visited," I said.

Nora gave the evidence to the investigators through the proper requests and releases. She also filed it in our cases. I made no calls to auction buyers or newspapers.

The records could travel without me.

Three weeks later, a thick envelope came from the court. Inside was notice of the final hearing on the trust property and Everett's purported will.