I read the email three times before I understood what I was looking at. The forty acres weren’t being sold to Dustin. The buyer was a company I’d never heard of, and the purchase agreement said the land had been in my name since my father died. I called the surveyor and asked who had hired him. He said my husband had contacted him in September and told him he was handling the estate. I asked what estate. There was a long silence before he said, “Your father’s. We were told you were the surviving owner.” I hadn’t given my husband permission to sell anything.
I confronted him that night with the laptop open between us. He finally admitted Dustin had approached him about buying the back pasture because he wanted to build a house there. My husband said he thought I would eventually agree, especially since the land wasn’t being used. I reminded him that I’d already told both of them it belonged to my children. Then I asked why the buyer needed my father’s death certificate. He said the title company required proof before closing. I asked him whose signature was on the purchase agreement. He wouldn’t answer. I opened the document again and saw a signature beside my name that looked almost right — except I’d never signed it.
The next morning I called the title company myself. They told me closing had already been scheduled for Friday. I said I was the person whose name was on the seller line and that I had never agreed to the sale. The woman immediately stopped talking about the closing and asked whether I’d authorized anyone to act for me. I said no. She asked me to hold while she contacted their legal department. Then she came back and said something that made my hands shake: “Ma’am, someone provided a power of attorney with your name on it.” I had never signed one. I asked who had submitted it. She said it came from the same email address used by the surveyor — and that the document had been notarized the week my husband started having breakfast with Dustin again.
