Part 3 — Sewn In The Cover
Moms note ended at the edge of the paper, but I knew exactly where it went. I had bought her machine back from a church lady for forty dollars that same week, and in the box with it was the old quilted dust cover Mom had made herself in 1974. I never thought to look at the lining.
Mr. Varner called a recess, and Rick sat very still at the table while I drove to the shed where I had stored the machine. My husband Royce came with me and held the flashlight. We carried the cover into the kitchen and set it on the table under the lamp.
The stitching along one seam was newer than the rest, small even stitches in cream thread. Moms. I took a seam ripper from her tin and opened four inches. Inside the lining, flattened between two layers of batting, was a bank envelope.
It held photocopies of eleven savings bond stubs, each with the date and the teller who had cashed it. Beside them were bank slips from a branch in Manitowoc, with her real signature on one side and a forged signature on the other, and a notarized statement in her careful hand, dated the Friday before she fell.
She had gone to Mr. Varners office that week, but he had been out, so she had made her own record. She asked a neighbor to notarize it, a retired judge named Mr. Olsen. He still remembered her coming over in her good coat with a covered dish.
Mr. Varner reviewed everything and called the Sheboygan County sheriff and the fraud unit at the bank. The Manitowoc branch pulled its security footage. There was Rick at the counter, eleven times in eleven months, signing Moms name in a slow practiced hand.
Then the sheriff gave us the answer I had been dreading. His detective examined the stairs, the neighbors statements, and the timestamps. On the afternoon Mom fell, Rick was standing at that bank counter in Manitowoc, forty minutes away, and the camera had him at exactly 2:10.
Mom had fallen on her own steps, as she had feared she someday might. The note about not tripping was the worry of a woman afraid of her own son-in-law, but the truth was kinder. She was not harmed by anyone that day, only cheated by one for a year. I put my hand over my mouth and sat in the sheriffs hallway and cried with relief.
Rick was arrested for forgery, theft, and financial exploitation of an elderly person. His fingerprints were on every counterfeit slip. He pleaded to the charges in front of Judge Anders and was sentenced to probation, restitution, and a strict order to stay away from the family accounts forever.
Linda cooperated with every question. She brought the rings to Mr. Varner herself, crying so hard she could hardly speak. She had believed Rick when he said Mom wanted her to have them, and she had never known about the bonds until the day of the meeting.
The bank repaid the full amount of the cashed bonds, and the court appointed me executor. Linda and I split everything evenly, as Mom had always intended, and we sold the house together with a hug on the front step.
The machine sits in my sewing room now, the cream-colored one from 1961. I set the quilted cover over it every night, and every morning I take it off. Last week a bride came to my door with a torn hem, and the old needle sang through the satin like it knew my hands.