…”signed them at your kitchen table, in front of a notary, on September 14th.”
I sat down very slowly. “September 14th?”
“That’s what the notary stamp says,” my attorney, Mr. Collins, said. “Your son filed a deed yesterday transferring your house to himself and his wife. Signed by you. Witnessed. Notarized. In your own home.”
“Mr. Collins,” I said, “on September 14th, I was in Italy.”
There was a silence on the line.
I’m seventy-two. My late husband and I always said we’d see Rome someday. We never did. So this fall, I finally went. Two weeks. A tour group of retired teachers. I’d told my son I was “visiting a friend in Florida,” because I knew he’d say I was too old to travel alone.
“Do you have proof?” Mr. Collins asked.
I had more than proof. I had a passport with an Italian entry stamp dated September 9th and an exit stamp dated September 23rd. I had boarding passes. I had hotel receipts. I had a tour guide’s itinerary. I had a framed photograph on my mantel of myself on September 14th, standing in front of the Trevi Fountain, holding a gelato and grinning like a fool. The tour company had sent it to me.
Mr. Collins came to my house that afternoon. He looked at the passport for a long time. Then he laughed, very quietly. “Mrs. Parker,” he said, “your son picked the one day you have the best alibi in America.”
The notary on the deed turned out to be a friend of my daughter-in-law, Courtney. When investigators asked her about it, she admitted she’d stamped a document that was already signed, at Courtney’s house, without ever seeing me. She’d been told I was “too sick to come to the door.”
Mr. Collins filed a motion to void the deed. A judge granted it within three weeks. He also referred the forgery to the district attorney. Courtney was charged. So was the notary.
My son, Brian, came to see me the day after the charges were filed. He said Courtney had handled “all the paperwork.” He said he’d thought I’d signed it. I asked him how I could have signed a document in my kitchen while I was eating gelato in Rome.
He didn’t have an answer. He just looked at the photograph on my mantel for a long time.
I took his name off every document I own. I made Mr. Collins my power of attorney.
Brian and I are slowly speaking again. He and Courtney separated in the spring. He’s apologized more than once. I believe he’s sorry. I’m not sure I believe he didn’t know.
I’ve already booked my next trip. Greece, in May. I told Brian this time. I told him exactly where I’ll be, every single day.
“Just in case,” I said, “anyone needs to know where I really was.”
