I asked the man to show me the identification attached to the tickets. It was the same woman every time, and she had been pawning things under her own name while using my address as the contact address. I asked what kind of items she’d brought in. He pulled up the inventory: jewelry, a silver serving set, two old cameras, a wedding ring, and several pieces of vintage furniture. I recognized almost everything. They were things that had disappeared from my attic and my mother’s room over the last two years. I had blamed myself for misplacing them.
I called Nathan from the parking lot and asked him where my mother’s watch came from. He said he’d found it in a box and needed the money for a car repair. I asked why the ticket wasn’t in his name. He said he didn’t know what I was talking about and hung up. When I got home, I went straight to the basement. The box where I’d kept my mother’s things was still on the shelf, but the lock had been replaced. Inside, several empty velvet cases were sitting where the jewelry had been. Then I noticed something underneath the box. There was a handwritten list of everything that had been taken, with dates beside each item.
The handwriting wasn’t Nathan’s. It was the handwriting of the woman from the pawnshop. I called the number she had left on the account, and she answered before I could say anything. I asked why she’d been selling my belongings. She started crying and said she hadn’t stolen them. Nathan had been bringing them to her, telling her they belonged to him. Then she said something that made me sit down. “He told me your mother left everything to him.” I asked why she had kept a list. She said because Nathan had promised her that once everything was sold, he’d finally give her the house — and the deed he’d shown her already had her name on it.
