Chapter 10: Admitted Unconscious

The judge was a tired woman with half-moon glasses, and she read both papers twice before she looked up.

"Ms. Rowe. Did you sign this transfer?"

"No, Your Honor."

"Mr. Carrow says you did, in front of a notary."

"I've never met the notary," I said. "And I never signed the hospital paper either. I don't remember it."

Emmett leaned toward the bench, soft-voiced.

"She was on morphine, Your Honor. She doesn't remember most of that week. I held her hand through all of it."

The judge looked at him for a long moment.

"I'm freezing the shares," she said. "Nobody votes them or sells them until a hearing in three weeks."

"Mr. Carrow, bring the notary. Ms. Rowe, bring a handwriting expert."

Emmett's smile held, but one of his fingers tapped the table once.

Outside, on the steps, Delphine caught my sleeve.

"You'll never prove it," she said sweetly. "She signed. You signed. Everyone remembers it differently, but the ink is the ink."

"Who brought the paper to my bed?"

"Ask your husband."

"I'm asking you."

She smiled and went down the steps with her hand over her stomach.

My lawyer touched my elbow.

"Don't go anywhere alone," he said. "I'll start on the expert."

I did go somewhere alone.

I went to Saint Anne's Hospital, where I had lain for six days two years ago.

The woman at the records window slid a form across to me, and I signed my own name three times, in my real hand, with the flat A.

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