Her confident expression faltered slightly. She clearly had not expected this reaction. Slowly, she walked over and handed me the document: a typed page with what appeared to be Adam’s signature at the bottom.
I scanned it quickly, noting inconsistencies immediately. The formal language was all wrong, nothing like the legal documents I’d seen Adam bring home. And the signature, while similar to Adam’s, was clearly forged. The connecting stroke between the A and D was wrong; the final flourish too pronounced.
I carefully folded the paper and handed it back to her. «Thank you for sharing this with me. I think I need to go now.»
«That is it?» Cassandra asked, confusion evident in her voice. «You are not going to say anything else?»
«Not right now,» I replied calmly, gathering my purse. «This is Lucas’s day. We can discuss this privately later.»
I said goodbye to my shell-shocked parents, promising to call them soon. As I walked to my car, I could hear the murmurs behind me, the party atmosphere completely shattered.
Once inside my car, safely out of view, I finally let out the laugh that had been threatening to escape. It started small, then grew until tears were streaming down my face. Not tears of joy, but a mix of grief, anger, and incredulous disbelief at my sister’s audacity.
Because there was something Cassandra did not know, something Adam and I had never shared with anyone. Something that made her elaborate lie not just hurtful, but impossible.
The truth about Adam and Cassandra began three years ago, long before Lucas was even conceived. We had invited my sister over for dinner to celebrate her new job at a marketing firm, her longest employment to date. Adam had prepared his famous lasagna, and we had opened a good bottle of wine.
It was a pleasant evening until I excused myself to take a work call from a client having a design emergency. The call took longer than expected, nearly 20 minutes of talking a wealthy client through hanging artwork.
When I returned to the dining room, the atmosphere had changed. Adam looked uncomfortable, and Cassandra was sitting much closer to him than when I had left, her hand on his arm, laughing at something I had not heard.
