Not like a father looking at his daughter.
Like a man looking at a locked door he had expected to find open.
“You did what?”
I swallowed.
“I protected what they left me.”
Dana’s face changed first.
The softness disappeared.
“Without talking to us?”
I almost laughed.
She was standing there holding my forged signature.
“Yes,” I said.
Victor stepped toward the porch.
“An eighteen-year-old can’t just lock up an estate because some lawyer tells her to.”
My attorney remained seated.
“She can when she is the lawful beneficiary, the trust instrument authorizes the transfer, and she has reached the required age.”
“We’re her family.”
“That isn’t a legal interest.”
Gary stared at the papers.
“So undo it.”
My attorney’s expression did not change.
“It is irrevocable.”
Those three words did more than any screaming could have done.
Dana lowered her folder.
Victor’s jaw tightened.
Gary looked toward the moving truck, then toward the cabin, as though the physical size of the place might somehow overpower the sentence he had just heard.
“There has to be a way around that.”
My attorney glanced at the forged authorization.
“Attempting to create one this way was a poor choice.”
Gary’s face flushed.
“Nobody forged anything.”
Dana spoke at the same time.
“Obviously there has been a clerical mistake.”
Victor said, “It was supposed to be signed last night.”
Silence.
He realized what he had said.
So did everyone else.
My attorney looked at him.
“Supposed to be?”
Victor’s shoulders rose defensively.
“We discussed it.”
“With her?”
He did not answer.
Dana stepped in front of him.
“This is getting absurd.
We were trying to prevent her from making reckless financial decisions.”
“By removing furniture at dawn?” I asked.
“By protecting assets.”
I pointed toward the moving truck.
“From me?”
She looked at me with sudden fury.
It was the first honest expression I had seen on her face since my birthday began.
“Do you have any idea what it costs to maintain this place? Taxes, repairs, insurance, roads? Your grandparents filled your head with sentimental nonsense and left the rest of us to clean up the consequences.”
There it was.
Not love.
Not concern.
The property.
