"That's not a position," Doug Pruett said. "That's a fact."
"Mr. Hollis?" Marcus turned to him. "Is that a fact?"
Grant's eyes moved, finally, from the place over Nora's shoulder to Marcus. "Yes," he said. "She knew. We'd talked about it. She knew."
"Thank you." Marcus opened a folder. He took out a single photocopied page and slid it across the table. "This is the line item from the notary's journal for May fourteenth, provided in response to a written request under Government Code section 8206. As you can see, there is one entry. One document: a durable power of attorney. One thumbprint. There's no journal entry for any deed, and a California notary cannot lawfully notarize a deed without a journal entry and a thumbprint."
Doug Pruett looked at the page. "A clerical error by the notary. Unfortunate. It doesn't speak to Mrs. Hollis's intent."
"I agree," Marcus said, and slid a second document across the table. "This does."
It was four typed pages. Nora watched Grant see the name at the top. She watched him read the first paragraph, and then the second, and then flip to the end, to the signature and the penalty-of-perjury line and the Elk Grove notary's stamp, and she watched the color leave his face exactly as it had left it under the lemon tree—from the forehead down, like a shade being lowered.
"She signed this," Grant said. It was not a question. He said it to no one. "She actually—"
"Ms. Castellano has also surrendered her notary journal to the Secretary of State and self-reported," Marcus said. "Her commission is under review. The Sacramento County District Attorney's real estate fraud unit has a copy of this declaration. So does Delta Federal Credit Union, which has withdrawn your HELOC application and, I'm told, flagged it for their own investigation." He turned one more page in his folder. "And there's the matter of the soft inquiry on Mrs. Hollis's credit, pulled through Sierra Pacific Bank's internal systems in March, under your employee credentials, with no application on file and no permissible purpose. My understanding is that your bank's compliance department takes that sort of thing quite seriously."
Doug Pruett said, "I'd like a few minutes with my client."
They took forty. Nora sat in Marcus's office with her feet up and drank a cup of peppermint tea that his paralegal made for her and watched the bridge go from gold to rose. Priya paced. At one point Priya stopped at the window and said, without turning around, "Are you all right?"
"I keep waiting to feel good," Nora said. "Like in a movie. Like I should want to stand on the table."
"Do you?"