The name was my father’s name. I told Bud that couldn’t be right because Daddy had been dead for sixteen years, and the farm had belonged to him alone. Bud pulled out the amended lease again and pointed to the second landlord’s address. It was a house in town I’d never owned and had never heard of. I called the county assessor because the tax ID was right there on the lease. The woman looked it up and said the property was owned by an LLC formed in 2022. I asked who the registered agent was. She read me the name, and it was the same woman who had handled Daddy’s estate. I told her that was impossible because the estate had closed in 2010.
I called the lawyer’s office and asked for the old file. There was no amended lease in Daddy’s estate records, but there was a power of attorney dated 2021. The signature looked like mine, and the notary stamp was from a town two counties away. I told the lawyer I’d never signed it. He said the document gave someone authority to manage the farm and collect rent on my behalf. I asked who had presented it. He said a woman had brought it in with a copy of my driver’s license. Then he read me the name on the authorization, and it was my younger sister’s. I don’t have a younger sister. My only sister died when she was four.
I drove back to Bud’s house and asked him why he’d never mentioned the second landlord before. He said he’d assumed I knew because the woman had been coming to the farm every March for three years to collect her check. I asked what she looked like. He described a woman about my age who knew exactly where the lease was kept and always called him by his childhood nickname. Then he pulled out the three previous rent checks. They were all made payable to the same LLC. And on the back of every check was an endorsement in handwriting I recognized from old family Christmas cards. I asked Bud whether she’d ever said who she was.
He looked at me and said, “She told me she was your sister.”
