Conrad Brought Flowers Before I Found The Forged Loan Consent

Conrad brought yellow flowers to the theater on Thursday, just as the children missed their entrance for the third time.

I held the same four bars until the smallest shepherd found his mark. That was my work as a theater accompanist. I made a mistake sound like a pause someone had planned.

I was thirty-nine, an Italian American woman who had spent half her life behind rehearsal pianos. I had olive skin, dark eyes, and black curls cut to my jaw, with one silver streak above my left ear.

My husband waited by the aisle with the flowers held high.

"Still working her too hard?" he asked the director.

Conrad was a white man, tall and pale, with sandy hair clipped close and a neat beard that made his soft smile look careful.

At forty-two, he had learned how to make a room think he took care of me.

"She's saving us," the director said.

"That's my girl."

He kissed my hair. Three parents smiled.

At home, the flowers went into a jelly jar. Conrad laid a thick folder beside them.

"The cottages need new financing," he said. "Friday next week. Just a renewal."

"A renewal of what?"

"Alessia. I've been doing numbers all day."

We had three small rental cottages near Bradley Creek, east of downtown Wilmington. They had pine floors, deep porches, and gutters that filled with long needles. My mother's estate had paid the down payment eleven years earlier.

The deed carried my name. The rental company used our married name, but the owner papers in my mother's old biscuit tin carried mine alone.

The original mortgage was small enough for the rent to cover. I still received its annual statement myself. Last winter, a little over $72,000 remained on it.

When we chose the cottages, Conrad had measured every porch for me. He had spent a whole Sunday finding a loose step. I remembered that man each time I tried to explain the one who now kept the statements behind a shut door.

Conrad managed bookings. I played evening shows. Over time, he stopped leaving the business folder on our desk.

Then he stopped calling it our desk.

"How much are we borrowing?" I asked.

"Enough to keep everything standing."

"That's not an amount."

He took a wilted leaf off a flower.

"The storms ate every dollar. You get your six hundred on the first, don't you?"

He called that transfer my allowance. My theater checks covered groceries, my car, and most of our power bill. I had once called the six hundred a share of the rent.

He had laughed until I stopped.

"I approved fourteen thousand six hundred for repairs," I said. "There should be something left."

"You approved the first work. Then we found damage."

I tapped a silent chord against the seam of my coat. Thumb, two fingers, little finger. I still had the coat on because I had expected a conversation, not another evening spent trying to earn one.

"Can I see the statements?"

"After closing. Right now you'll confuse yourself."

His phone rang. He carried the folder into the spare room and shut the door.

I put the flowers in the sink.

When we bought the cottages, I had opened the booking account. Its monthly payout files still went to my old owner inbox. Conrad had changed the daily contact address, but those archive copies had kept arriving.

I had saved them by year, the same way I saved scores for shows that might return.

I had stopped opening them. That was different from throwing them away.

At the kitchen table, I opened the last twelve monthly files. The net booking deposits came to $186,400.

That was money received after the booking service took its fees. It was not all profit. I knew that much without Conrad explaining it.

I also knew it was more than nothing.

A recent statement showed a change in payout instructions. Beside a transfer marked repair reserve sat a name I did not know: Cape Lantern Repair LLC.

I wrote it on the back of an old rehearsal notice.

Then I opened my saved repair approval. One page. My signature at the bottom. Roof patches and porch boards, a limit of $14,600, no change without written approval.

I remembered signing it while Conrad waited for his coffee.

From the spare room, his voice floated down the hall.

"She doesn't deal with any of that. Send it to me."

I searched my inbox for the loan company's name from the folder. A message sat in junk mail, addressed to me as property owner. Its subject was Owner Review Copy.

The proposed loan was $240,000.

I opened the packet with both hands flat on the table.

An owner consent page said I approved the loan and its payment directions. Under it sat something shaped like my signature.

The capital A was almost right. The small letters leaned the wrong way.

I checked the page twice. Then I looked toward the closed spare-room door.

Conrad had signed my name.