My mother’s new husband had no idea I was a former FBI Special Agent. After months of b*ating her, he threatened, “If you ever leave me, I’ll make sure neither of you lives.” She walked away anyway
I’m going to be the signature he forged.”
The pressure came Thursday.
Not from Royce.
From my aunt Pearl.
My mother’s sister.
The one who’d introduced them at church.
“Danielle.
Honey.
I know Royce has a temper, and I’m not defending the — but you’ve got the FBI involved now, and lawyers, and it’s going to be his whole life, and he’s a deacon, and your mother’s sixty-one and she’s confused, and can’t you just let it go?
Let them divorce quiet.
Let him keep the house and everybody moves on.”
“Aunt Pearl, if a stranger had forged my name on a two-hundred-thousand-dollar loan and threatened to k*ll my mother, would you tell me to let it go so he could keep the house?”
A long silence.
“That’s — that’s different, he’s family, he’s — ”
“Whose name is on the house, Aunt Pearl?”
“…I don’t know.”
“Mine.
My father put it there two years ago.
Royce forged my signature to borrow against it.
That’s not a divorce.
That’s a fel*ny, and I didn’t make it one.
He did.
With a pen.”
She didn’t have anything for that.
She said, before she hung up, “Your father always did handle the paperwork.”
“Yes,” I said.
“He did.
He handled this one before he d*ed.
He just let me open it.”
Friday, Royce did the thing my father said he’d do.
He couldn’t stand not being in charge of the document.
He had his attorney file an emergency motion for “exclusive use of the marital residence” — the house — and he attached, as an exhibit, the refinance, to prove he’d been “maintaining the property.”
He attached the forged signature to a court filing.
Under oath.
“He put it in the record,” Warren said, when I sent it to him.
“He forged your name, used it to steal two hundred grand, and then filed it with a court to prove the house was his.
