I didn’t call Ryan.
I called Helen.
Helen Chao had been my neighbor for twenty-three years. She was seventy-one, sharp as a scalpel, and had been a paralegal for thirty years before retiring. She picked up on the second ring, the way she always did.
“Martha? It’s almost midnight. You alright?”
“No,” I said. “I need your help.”
I heard the rustle of her getting out of bed. No questions. No hesitation. Just the sound of her feet hitting the floor and the creak of her kitchen chair.
“Come over,” she said. “I’ll put the kettle on.”
I walked the thirty steps to her front door in my slippers, the cold pavement biting through the soles. She opened the door before I knocked, reading glasses perched on her nose, her gray hair wrapped in a silk scarf.
She didn’t ask me what happened. She just looked at my face, then at the paper in my hand, and stepped aside.
We sat at her kitchen table — the one covered in crossword puzzles and seed catalogs — and I spread the paper out between us. She put on her stronger glasses. She read it twice. Then she looked at me with an expression I had never seen on her face before.
It wasn’t sympathy. It was recognition.
“Martha,” she said slowly. “Where did you get this?”
“My purse. It was in my purse tonight at the restaurant. I didn’t put it there.”
“Someone put it in your bag.”
“Yes.”
She exhaled through her nose. “I’ve seen this kind of thing before. Twice, actually, in my career. Once with an elderly client whose daughter tried to refinance her house without permission. Once with a man whose business partner forged his name on a loan agreement.”
She looked at me. “Do you own your house outright?”
“Yes. George and I paid it off.”
“Is it in your name only now?”
“Yes. Since George passed, it’s just mine.”
Helen leaned back. “Martha, I need to ask you something, and I need you to think carefully before you answer. Has Ryan ever asked you to sign anything recently? Papers, documents, anything he said was routine or unimportant?”
The memory hit me like cold water.
Three months ago. Ryan had come over on a Sunday, bringing that grocery store sushi Lauren liked. He’d been sweet. Sweeter than he’d been in years. He’d helped me clean the gutters. He’d sat with me at the kitchen table and asked how I was doing, really doing, since the winter got hard.
And then he’d pulled out a manila envelope.
“Mom, this is just a standard form for the insurance company. They need updated beneficiary information. Sign here and here.”
I had signed. Without reading it. Because he was my son. Because he brought sushi. Because it had been so long since he sat at my table and talked to me like I mattered.
Helen saw my face change.
“That bad?” she asked.
“I signed something. Three months ago. He said it was insurance paperwork.”
“Did you keep a copy?”
