**Part 2**
The next afternoon, my father threw a barbecue.
He’d planned it weeks before, apparently. My mother told me about it at breakfast, like she was letting me in on a secret.
“Your father’s invited some people from post. Colonel Brandt and his wife. The Ashfords. A few others. It’s important for his work, so please. Be pleasant.”
Colonel Brandt was a brigade commander. He was also, as it happened, on the board that would be reviewing my packet for promotion to major that spring.
My father knew that. I found out later that was why he’d invited him.
By three o’clock, my backyard was full of people.
My father stood at my grandfather’s grill in an apron that said GRILL SERGEANT. My mother moved through the guests with a tray of deviled eggs. Chloe sat in a lawn chair in the shade with her feet up on a cooler, and people kept coming over to touch her belly and ask when she was due.
I stood by the fence in jeans and a T-shirt and watched it all.
It was a nice party. I’ll give them that.
It was a nice party at my house, with my grill, on my lawn, with my grandfather’s pine trees throwing long shadows across the grass. And every single person there thought it belonged to my parents.
I heard my mother say it. Twice.
“Oh, we’ve been so lucky with this house. Richard’s father left it to the family.”
The family.
I heard my father say it too. He had Colonel Brandt by the grill, and he was waving his tongs at the back porch.
“My dad built that porch himself. Summer of ’78. I helped him set the posts.”
My father was twelve in 1978. He’d spent that summer at a baseball camp in Denver. I know, because my grandfather told me. “Built the whole thing myself,” he’d said. “Your dad was too busy hitting balls to hold a level.”
Colonel Brandt nodded politely. He glanced over at me. I nodded back.
Around five, my father caught my eye across the yard and jerked his head toward the side of the house.
I followed him around the corner, past the garbage cans, to the narrow strip of gravel between the house and the neighbor’s fence.
He didn’t waste time.
“You need to handle something tomorrow.”
“What kind of something?”
“A transfer. Paperwork. Simple.”
“Transfer of what?”
He looked at me like I was deliberately wasting his time. Like I was a lieutenant who’d forgotten how to read a map.
“The house.”
I didn’t say anything.
“Chloe needs stability,” he went on. “She’s having a baby. Vance’s company cut half their crew in March. They need a place that’s theirs. Not a place they’re borrowing from you. You’re gone all the time. You don’t even use it. There’s no reason for you to keep holding onto it.”
“Holding onto it.”
“You know what I mean.”
“It’s mine, Dad. Grandpa left it to me.”
“Grandpa,” my father said, and something ugly flashed in his face, “was an old man who played favorites. He should have left it to me. Everybody knows that. You got lucky. And now it’s time to do the right thing.”
“And what’s the right thing?”
“There’s a title company in town. Mesa Title. Your mother set it up. The paperwork’s ready. You go in tomorrow at two, you sign a quitclaim deed putting the house in Chloe and Vance’s names, and it’s done. Clean. Simple. Nobody has to make a big deal about it.”
I looked at him for a long moment.
“Why do you need me to sign it?”
“What?”
“If Mom has power of attorney,” I said, very evenly, “why doesn’t she just sign it for me?”
For a second, just a second, my father’s face went completely blank.
Then he recovered.
“The title company wants you in person. Some rule about military and real estate. Whatever. It doesn’t matter. Just go sign it.”
So they’d already tried.
They’d walked into a title company with a forged power of attorney and tried to sign my house away while I was on the other side of the world. And somebody at the title company had stopped them.
“And if I don’t?” I asked.
My father’s tone changed.
It got quiet. Quiet was always worse with my father.
“I still have connections, Kate.”
I waited.
“You’re up for major this spring,” he said. “Brandt’s on your board. I’ve known Tom Brandt for fifteen years. It would be a real shame if something came up. Some financial irregularities. Some questions about your judgment. You know how the Army is about officers with money problems. Security clearances. Background checks.” He shrugged. “It would be a shame if something complicated that process.”
Money problems.
He was threatening to report me for money problems.
Money problems he had created. With money he had stolen.
For several seconds, I just stared at him.
He still thought he was giving me orders.
He still saw me as the daughter who would bend. Who would soak up whatever damage they did and quietly clean up whatever mess they made. The good sister. The one who never asked for anything.
I was holding a plastic cup of lemonade. I raised it and took a slow drink.
Then I smiled.
“I’ll make sure the paperwork is handled exactly as it should be, Dad.”
He watched my face for a moment. Something in him wasn’t sure.
Then he said, “Good,” and walked back around the corner to the grill.
I stood there between the garbage cans for a while, finishing my lemonade.
Then I went down to the basement and got the folder out of the safe.
The next morning, I walked into the Legal Assistance office at Fort Carson at 0800 with the folder tucked under my arm.
I’d called ahead. I’d said it was urgent. I must have sounded like I meant it, because they got me in to see Captain Morales at the start of the day.
Captain Elena Morales was about my age, maybe a little older, with dark hair pulled back tight and a desk so neat it looked like nobody had ever used it. She shook my hand and pointed to the chair across from her.
“Tell me what you’ve got.”
I told her.
I told her about the trash bags. The basement. The cot. I told her about the bank alerts and the transfers and the power of attorney. I told her about the barbecue and the side of the house and “I still have connections.”
She didn’t interrupt. She just wrote.
Then I laid it all out on her desk. The bank statements, printed at the library that morning. The account access records. The power of attorney.
She went through them slowly. Page by page.
When she got to the power of attorney, her pace slowed.
She looked at the signature for a long time.
“That’s not yours.”
“No, ma’am.”
“You’re sure.”
I took a pen off her desk and signed my name on a blank sheet of paper. Katherine A. Hollis. I slid it next to the power of attorney.
She looked from one to the other.
“Your K is completely different,” she said. “And whoever did this was copying something. Look at the pressure. See how it’s heavier here, where they slowed down?”
“I see it.”
She kept reading.
“Forty-five thousand,” she said. “Transferred while you were deployed.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She leaned back in her chair. She took a breath and let it out slowly.
“All right. This is already bad,” she said. “Forgery. Theft. Probably identity theft. Misuse of a power of attorney against a deployed service member. Your father’s threat about your promotion could be something too, depending on how it plays out. And that’s all before we even get to the house.”
“The house is what I’m most worried about.”
“I know.” She reached for her phone. “Which is why I’m calling somebody who knows real estate better than I do. We work with a civilian attorney for cases like this. Give me five minutes.”
His name was Martin Dalton.
He was maybe sixty, with a gray mustache and a tweed jacket that looked like it had been through a few decades of courtrooms. He came in twenty minutes later carrying a briefcase with a broken latch, shook my hand, and sat down right next to Captain Morales without waiting to be asked.
“Show me,” he said.
He worked through the paperwork even faster than she had. Page after page. Every so often he’d grunt, or tap something with his pen, or say “Mm-hm” in a way that didn’t sound good for somebody.
He went through the bank statements. The power of attorney. Then he picked up the manila folder from my grandfather’s safe.
He took out the deed. He held it up to the light. He ran his thumb over the seal the same way I had.
“Original,” he said. “Good.”
He went through the trust documents. The distribution papers. The recording from the county, when the house passed from the trust to me.
“This is clean,” he said. “Your grandfather knew what he was doing. Or he had somebody who did.” He turned another page. “Your father’s never been on this title. Not once. Not even in the trust. He was never a beneficiary.”
“He thinks he should have been.”
“Lots of people think lots of things,” Dalton said. “The county only cares what’s recorded.”
He kept going. He was almost at the end of the folder.
Then suddenly, he stopped.
“Hold on.”
He turned toward the very back of the folder. There was a pocket there, sewn into the inside of the back cover. I’d never noticed it. The folder had been sitting in that safe for years, and I’d only ever looked at the deed on top.
Dalton reached into the pocket and pulled out an envelope.
A thick, cream-colored envelope. Sealed. Yellowed a little at the corners.
He looked at the front of it. Then he slid it across the desk toward me.
“That yours?”
On the front of the envelope, in my grandfather’s handwriting, in blue ink, were three words.
For Katie. Only if.
My hands started shaking.
I hadn’t seen my grandfather’s handwriting in seven years. It was square and slanted and a little shaky, the way it got near the end. I’d know it anywhere.
“I’ve never seen this before,” I said.
“Well,” said Dalton gently, “I think it’s been waiting for you.”
I looked at Captain Morales. She nodded.
I opened it.
Inside were two things.
The first was a letter. Two pages, folded in thirds. The second was a document, several pages stapled together, with a notary’s stamp on the last page.
I unfolded the letter.
“Katie,
If you’re reading this, something has gone wrong. I told you to only open the safe if you needed it. So you needed it. I’m sorry, sweetheart.
I’m going to guess it’s your father. I hope I’m wrong. I’ve spent a lot of years hoping I was wrong about him.
There’s something I never told you. I never told anybody. In 2011, your father forged my signature on a loan against this house. Sixty thousand dollars. He said later he was going to pay it back before I noticed. He didn’t. I found out when the bank sent a letter about late payments.
I paid it off. Every penny. I didn’t go to the police. He’s my son. I told myself it was a mistake. That he was in trouble and he panicked and he’d learn.
He didn’t learn. Your grandmother always said Richard never learned anything he didn’t want to know.
So I wrote everything down. I went to a lawyer and swore to it. It’s attached here. I’ve never shown it to anyone. I hoped I never would have to.
That’s why the house is yours, Katie. Not because I love you more. I love all of you. It’s because you’re the one who’ll take care of it. And you’re the one who’ll need somewhere to stand when the ground shakes.
Your whole life, they’ve asked you to be a good sister. A good daughter. You’ve been both. Better than they deserved.
Now I’m asking you to be something else.
I’m asking you to be good to yourself.
Don’t let them make you small in my house.
I’ll be on the porch.
Love always,
Grandpa”
I read it twice.
Then I put it down on Captain Morales’s neat desk and put my hand over my mouth.
Nobody said anything for a long time.
Dalton picked up the second document. He read it carefully, his mustache moving a little as he mouthed some of the words.
“This is a sworn affidavit,” he said quietly. “From Walter Hollis. Dated March 2012. Notarized. It details a forged deed of trust—a loan—against the property, signed with his name without his permission, by Richard Hollis. The loan number. The bank. The amount. The date he discovered it. The date he paid it off.” He looked up. “He kept copies of everything. The bank letters. The payoff statement. The forged signature.”
He turned to the last page.
“And there’s this. A photocopy of the forged loan document.” He held it next to the power of attorney with my name on it.
Captain Morales leaned in to look.
Then she let out a low whistle.
It was the same hand. The same heavy pressure where the writer slowed down. The same strange hook at the end of the last letter, like someone who’d practiced the name but never got the finish right.
“Same person,” said Dalton. “Fourteen years apart. Same exact mistakes.”
“He did it before,” I said. My voice sounded far away. “He did the exact same thing to Grandpa.”
“And your grandfather,” Dalton said, “made sure you’d be able to prove it.”
He set the papers down very carefully, like they might break.
“Captain Hollis,” he said. “In thirty-four years of practice, I have never seen a man protect somebody from beyond the grave quite like this.”
After that, everything moved fast.
Captain Morales got on the phone with the Colorado Springs Police Department. Because the theft and forgery were civilian crimes, it was their case. But because my father worked on post, as a Department of the Army civilian, she also called the Criminal Investigation Division.
“Your father made a threat involving a promotion board,” she said. “Using his position. That’s not just family drama anymore. That’s official.”
Dalton called Mesa Title.
He put them on speaker. The woman who answered was named Brenda. She sounded nervous.
“Yes,” she said. “Mrs. Hollis came in back in April with a power of attorney. She wanted to execute a quitclaim deed on the property on behalf of her daughter. The house on Pinecrest.”
“And you didn’t process it,” said Dalton.
“No, sir. Our policy is that we don’t accept a general power of attorney for a real estate transfer when the owner is active military and deployed. It has to be a specific one, with the property named. Also—” She hesitated. “Honestly, something felt off. Mrs. Hollis kept saying her daughter ‘wanted this’ but couldn’t explain why the daughter wasn’t calling us herself. And the husband kept answering questions for her.”
“So you asked for the owner to sign in person.”
“We did. We have an appointment set for today. Two o’clock.”
Dalton looked at me.
I looked at the clock on Captain Morales’s wall. It was 11:40.
“Keep the appointment,” Dalton said into the phone. “But move it. Tell Mrs. Hollis there’s been a change. The signing will take place at the property.”
“At the—”
“At the house,” Dalton said. “The owner would like to be home for it.”
My father thought I was bringing a notary.
That’s what my mother told him, after the title company called. I heard her through the basement ceiling at one o’clock, while I sat on the cot in my uniform with my grandfather’s letter folded in my breast pocket.
“She’s having them come to the house. Isn’t that sweet? I think she wants to make it special. For Chloe.”
My father said something I couldn’t hear.
“Richard, stop worrying. She said she’d handle it. She always handles it.”
She always handles it.
I put on my cover. I checked my uniform in the little mirror by the basement stairs. I’d pressed it that morning, before the sun came up, in the laundry room of my own house, while my family slept upstairs in my bedrooms.
At 1:55, I heard cars in the driveway.
I went upstairs.
My whole family was in the living room. My father in a pressed polo shirt. My mother in her cream cardigan, with a plate of cookies on the coffee table. Chloe on the gray sectional with her feet up. Vance standing behind her, one hand on her shoulder, looking like he’d rather be anywhere else.
They’d put a bottle of champagne on the kitchen counter with a bow on it. Next to it was a card that said CONGRATULATIONS, HOMEOWNERS!
My mother turned around and saw me in uniform.
“Oh, Kate. You didn’t have to dress up.”
“I think I did, Mom.”
The doorbell rang.
My father answered it with his big welcoming smile.
It was Martin Dalton, in his tweed jacket, with his broken briefcase.
Behind him was Captain Morales in uniform.
Behind her were two officers from the Colorado Springs Police Department.
And behind them was a man in a gray suit with a badge clipped to his belt. Special Agent Harlan, Army CID.
My father’s smile didn’t disappear right away.
It just sort of froze on his face and stayed there, like it didn’t know where else to go.
“Richard Hollis?” said one of the police officers. His name tag said SGT. PAYNE.
My father didn’t answer.
“Mr. Hollis, we’d like to speak with you and your wife. May we come in?”
“This is a private family matter,” my father said. “There’s been some kind of mistake—”
“It’s not a mistake,” I said.
Everyone turned to look at me.
I walked to the front door. I stood beside Dalton and faced my family.
“It’s my house,” I said. “And I’m inviting them in.”
My father looked at me. Really looked at me. And for the first time in my whole life, I saw my father not know what to do.
Then he stepped aside.
They came into the living room. There were suddenly too many people. My mother was still holding the plate of cookies. Chloe had put her feet down and was sitting straight up, one hand on her belly, looking from face to face.
“Mom?” she said. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing, sweetie. It’s nothing. Kate’s just—”
“Ma’am,” said Sergeant Payne. “Are you Evelyn Hollis?”
My mother’s voice went up an octave. “Yes.”
“Mrs. Hollis, we’re investigating the use of a power of attorney on the bank accounts of Captain Katherine Hollis. We have reason to believe that document was forged. We also have records showing forty-five thousand dollars was transferred from Captain Hollis’s accounts to an account in your name while she was deployed overseas.”
The plate of cookies tipped a little in my mother’s hands. One slid off and hit the carpet.
“Forty-five thousand dollars?” said Chloe.
Nobody answered her.
“Kate gave us that,” my mother said. “She gave us permission. She signed the paper before she left.”
“No, I didn’t,” I said.
“You did! You don’t remember. You were so busy packing, you signed all kinds of things—”
“Evelyn,” said my father sharply.
My mother stopped talking.
Captain Morales stepped forward with a folder. She opened it and held up the power of attorney. Then, next to it, a copy of the page from my grandfather’s affidavit. The old forged loan. The same heavy hand. The same strange hook at the end.
“Mr. Hollis,” said Special Agent Harlan. He had a quiet voice. The kind that made people lean in to hear it. “In 2011, your father, Walter Hollis, swore under oath that you forged his signature on a sixty-thousand-dollar loan against this property.”
My father’s face went white.
Not pale. White. Like somebody had pulled a plug.
“That’s—” he said. “My father never—he never reported—”
“He didn’t report it,” said Dalton. “He wrote it down. He had it notarized. And he put it in a safe in the basement of this house, with a letter to his granddaughter. Where it stayed until this morning.”
My father turned and looked at me.
“What safe?” he said. “There’s no safe. I’ve been through this whole house.”
“Not the whole house,” I said.
Nobody moved for a long moment.
Then Chloe said, in a small voice, “Dad?”
My father didn’t look at her.
“Dad. Is it true?”
“It’s complicated, sweetheart.”
“Did you take Kate’s money?”
“Chloe, honey, let’s not do this in front of—”
“Did you?”
My mother stepped between them. “Your father was trying to help you. Everything we did, we did for you. You and Vance were drowning. The credit cards. The truck payment. The medical bills. Kate has so much. She doesn’t have a family to take care of. It wasn’t hurting her—”
“It wasn’t hurting her?” Chloe stood up. It took her a second, with the baby. Vance reached out to help her and she shook his hand off. “You told me she offered. You told me Kate wanted us to have the house. You said she was excited about being an aunt and she wanted to give us a gift. You said she’d call when she got back.”
My mother opened her mouth. Closed it.
Chloe turned to me.
Her face was pink and blotchy and she looked about twelve years old.
“You didn’t know,” she said. “About any of this. Did you?”
“No, Chlo,” I said. “I didn’t know you were pregnant until I walked in the door.”
My sister stared at me.
“They told me you knew,” she whispered. “They said you were too busy to call. I thought you didn’t care.”
I didn’t know what to say to that.
We stood there across the living room from each other, my little sister and me, with a whole lifetime of our parents’ stories between us.
Then Vance cleared his throat.
“I knew about the money,” he said.
Everyone turned.
Vance’s face was bright red. He was looking at the floor. His big hands were hanging at his sides.
“Not the forgery. I swear I didn’t know about that. Your mom said Kate had set up a thing. Before she left. To help us. She said we should just use it and not make a big deal, because Kate was private about money.” He swallowed. “But I knew it was Kate’s money. And I knew it was a lot. And I didn’t ask. I didn’t want to ask.” He looked at Chloe. “We were so behind, babe. I didn’t want you to know how bad it was. I just wanted it to stop.”
Chloe looked at him like she’d never seen him before.
Then she sat back down on the gray couch. Slowly. Carefully. She put both hands over her face.
My father tried one more time.
He did it the way he’d done everything my whole life. He stood up straight. He turned to Special Agent Harlan, man to man, and he lowered his voice to that calm, reasonable tone.
“Look. Agent. I’m a retired lieutenant colonel. I served this country for twenty-two years. This is a family matter that got out of hand. My daughter’s under a lot of stress. She just got back from a deployment. You know how it is. I think if we all just sit down—”
“Mr. Hollis,” said Harlan. “Yesterday afternoon, did you threaten to interfere with your daughter’s promotion to major if she didn’t sign over this property?”
My father stopped.
“Colonel Tom Brandt called my office this morning,” Harlan went on, very quietly. “He said that at your barbecue yesterday, you told him your daughter had ‘some financial problems’ and that he should ‘keep an eye on her packet.’ He thought it was strange. He thought it was strange enough to make a call.”
My father’s mouth opened. Nothing came out.
“You have connections, Mr. Hollis,” said Harlan. “That’s true. And it turns out one of them has a conscience.”
They didn’t handcuff my parents in the living room.
I’d wondered if they would. Part of me wanted to see it, I’ll be honest. The part of me that was seven years old with a broken volcano.
But they didn’t. They asked my parents to come down to the station to give statements. My mother cried and said she wanted a lawyer. My father didn’t say anything at all. He walked out of my front door without looking back at me, and got into the back of the patrol car, and stared straight ahead through the window.
At the last second, my mother stopped on the porch.
She turned around. Her face was wet. Her mascara had run.
“How could you do this to your own family?” she said.
I thought about that question.
I thought about eleven trash bags in the hallway. About a cot in the basement. About forty-five thousand dollars that I’d earned sleeping in the dirt, worrying about my soldiers, missing Christmas. About a forged signature at the bottom of a page.
About my grandfather, writing a letter he hoped I’d never have to read.
“I didn’t do this, Mom,” I said. “I just stopped cleaning it up.”
She stared at me.
Then Sergeant Payne gently touched her elbow, and she turned and walked down the porch steps. My grandfather’s porch steps. The ones he built himself in the summer of 1978.
