"Open it," she said finally.
Nora opened the envelope. There were two documents inside. The first was a photocopy of a single page from a notary journal, ruled into columns, her mother's slanting hand filling one row. Date: 5/14. Time: 7:22 p.m. Signer: Nora Castellano Hollis. ID: CA DL, number, expiration. Type of act: Acknowledgment. Document: Durable Power of Attorney (Gen.) And in the last column, a gray thumbprint, a tiny river map. Hers.
Only one row. Only one document.
The second document was four typed pages titled DECLARATION OF DIANE R. CASTELLANO, and at the bottom of the last page was her mother's signature, and under it the words I declare under penalty of perjury under the laws of the State of California that the foregoing is true and correct, and under that, the stamp of a notary Nora had never heard of, in Elk Grove.
She read it right there, while her mother sat on the edge of the recliner and looked at the boats.
It was all in it. January, the nursery paint, the first time. The Tuesdays and Thursdays, which had never been running, which had been a room at an extended-stay hotel off Pocket Road. March, and Meyer Lane Holdings, and the forty-eight thousand dollars. The plan, laid out in her mother's plain bank-manager prose: put Grant on the title; draw a line of credit against the house, which was worth nearly seven hundred thousand dollars now and owned free and clear; use it to buy and renovate the fourplex on Q Street; refinance the fourplex in eighteen months and pay back the line of credit "before Nora would need to know." That was the phrase. Before Nora would need to know. And May fourteenth: Grant had prepared the interspousal transfer deed himself from a template his bank used. He had placed it directly behind the power of attorney. Diane had taken one thumbprint and made one journal entry, deliberately, so that there would be "only one document on record that night," and then, after Nora had gone into the kitchen to wash her thumb, Diane had stamped and signed the acknowledgment certificate on the deed. Grant had recorded it at the county office on Third Street during his lunch break on June third.
I knew exactly what the document was, her mother had written. I knew my daughter did not know what she was signing. I knew it was wrong, and I knew it was illegal, and I did it anyway.
Nora put the pages down on the coffee table, next to the boats.
"Why," she said. "I know you didn't come to give reasons. Give me one anyway."
Diane looked at her hands.
"You want the true one or the one I told myself?"
"Both."
"The one I told myself," Diane said slowly, "was that it was mine. The house. That it was supposed to be mine. I grew up in this house. I painted that bedroom when I was fourteen, I painted it purple, and Daddy let me, and then when I got pregnant with you he stood in that kitchen and said, You made your bed, Dee. Those words. I had you, and I married your father, and I never went back to school, and I worked at a bank for thirty years, and I did everything right. Everything. And then he died, and he gave you the house." Her voice didn't rise. That was the frightening thing. It stayed perfectly level. "He left a note, you know. With the lawyer. I saw it. It said I'd sell it. As if I couldn't be trusted with his precious house. As if I hadn't earned—" She stopped. "So I told myself I was only borrowing against something that should've been mine anyway. That I'd pay it back. That you'd never even notice. That you'd be fine. You're always fine. You were always the one who was fine."