Part 3 — Account 4417
Queenie slid her finger across the page and read the last line in a low, kind voice.
“Wired to account ending in 4417 at Prairie State Credit Union, titled in the name of Leonard J. Whitfield, trading account, joint with no one.”
I put my hand on the counter to steady myself. A man in line behind me was kind enough to look at the ceiling.
The register of deeds office has a notary bureau down the hall, and Queenie walked me there herself. A clerk named Mr. Abernathy listened to my story and pulled out a form I had never seen before, an affidavit of forgery.
I signed it in front of him with the loop on the D, and he stamped it.
Under Kansas law, a forged signature on a security instrument does not bind the owner. The lender would have to release the lien once the forgery was shown, and the fraud would be Leonards own debt, not mine.
Forty-four years I had lived in his shadow, and in a county office with a four-dollar copy I learned I had never needed anyones shade.
The credit union froze the account the same afternoon. Thirty-two thousand, one hundred forty dollars was still in it, untouched, because Leonard could not bring himself to trade it.
My son Mark drove down from Salina and sat with me at the kitchen table while we called the lender. A fraud officer named Ms. Patel listened for twenty minutes without interrupting. Then she said the bank would investigate, release the lien, and treat the loan as a fraud against both of us.
Leonard did not wait to be asked. He appeared on my porch on a Thursday evening, gray in the face, still in his robe under his coat.
He said he had told himself every morning it was the last trade. He said he had been terrified to tell me, and that was the only reason he had signed my name.
I told him that was the reason, and also not the excuse.
I asked for the piano money. He had saved a check for exactly five thousand three hundred dollars, in an envelope, as if he had been planning to hand it over for months.
The lawyer drew up a separation agreement. The house, my mothers brick house, was recorded in my name alone, with the lien released by Easter.
The piano tuner came on a bright Saturday in May. He lifted the lid and struck middle C, and the note rang clear through the house.
That night I played Mama a hymn, softer on the left hand.