I asked the county clerk to pull the entire deed and trust file. The trustee was my husband’s brother, the same brother he’d supposedly only visited in Branson that week. The trust had been created three months before the quitclaim deed, and both our names appeared on the transfer. I asked why we would give away a house we’d spent twenty-eight thousand dollars repairing after my husband left work. The clerk said the deed itself wasn’t unusual, but the consideration line was strange: one dollar and “other valuable consideration.” Then she showed me the signature page. My signature was there, but I knew immediately it wasn’t mine. It had the right shape and even the little loop I make at the end, but it was too careful.
I called my husband’s brother and asked him about the trust. He said my husband had wanted the house protected in case something happened to either of us. I asked why nobody had told me. He said my husband had handled everything and that I must have forgotten. Then I asked where the trust documents were. He said his attorney had them. I called that attorney and was told they couldn’t discuss a client’s trust with me. I reminded them that I was listed as one of the people who supposedly signed the deed. The woman on the phone went quiet and asked me to come in with identification. When I arrived, she pulled the closing file and showed me a document I’d never seen — a letter supposedly written by me authorizing my husband to transfer the property without my presence.
Then I saw the date. It was signed the same week my husband was in Branson with his brother. I asked for the notary journal, and the attorney’s receptionist said the notary had already been contacted about a discrepancy. I called the county again and asked who currently had authority over the trust. The clerk read me the trustee’s name, then paused. There had been an amendment filed six months after the transfer. My husband’s brother was no longer the trustee. A woman had replaced him. I asked who she was. The clerk read the name twice, because she thought I’d misunderstood. It was my husband’s first wife — the woman he told me had died before we ever met.
