The name typed beneath the signature belonged to my mother. I read it three times because she was only twelve years old in 1988, and the closing file showed her listed as the borrower on a mortgage against my grandmother’s house. The signature above it was my grandmother’s, unmistakably hers, but the typed name underneath belonged to someone who had no legal reason to be there. I called the county office and asked whether the original application had survived with the closing documents. The clerk said there was one additional page that hadn’t been included in the copy I received.
I drove to the records office the next morning and asked to see it. The page was a handwritten authorization dated two weeks before the mortgage was closed, and my mother’s name appeared at the bottom in handwriting that looked nothing like hers. The strange part was the date, because my mother had been away at a summer camp that entire week. I asked the clerk whether minors could have been listed on mortgage paperwork at the time, and she said not without a parent or guardian signing on their behalf. Then she pointed to the signature above my mother’s name and said, “That’s the part you’re going to want to look at.”
It was my grandfather’s signature. He had died in 1974. I sat there staring at the page until the clerk asked whether I needed a chair. I told her my grandfather had been dead for fourteen years when that mortgage was opened, and she quietly closed the folder. Then she told me there was one more document attached to the file that hadn’t been digitized because it was marked as “supplemental correspondence.” The letter was from the bank manager to the county recorder, and it explained why the mortgage had been approved despite the unusual paperwork. The last sentence said the loan had been arranged at the request of a person whose name I recognized immediately.
It was my grandmother’s sister—the aunt everyone in the family had always described as having left town in 1978 and never returned. I had heard that story my entire life. But according to the bank letter, she had been living in the house in 1988 and had personally guaranteed the loan. I called my mother that evening and asked her whether she remembered her aunt being there when she was fourteen. There was a long silence on the other end of the phone. Then my mother said, “I remember being told she was dead.” I looked back at the closing file and realized the mortgage wasn’t the mystery anymore. The real question was why my family had spent forty years pretending someone was gone when the paperwork proved she wasn’t.
