Michelle Gilchrist.
Dated March 12, 1996.
Notarized by Sherry A. Heller, Notary Public.
I put my finger on the signature.
It looked exactly like mine.
It was not mine.
“Anders,” I said.
My voice cracked on his name, and I made myself say it again.
“I never wrote this.”
“I wasn’t even in Bellmont on March 12, 1996.”
Outside the window, the streetlights came on, one by one.
PART 3
He pulled the vinyl chair to the side of my bed and sat down like a man who hadn’t sat in two days.
“You asked what really happened to me,” Anders said. “I should answer that first.”
“Please,” I said.
“I never went to Arizona. A lawyer named Irwin Danforth arranged a private placement. A family in Lindenwald, Ohio, forty-one miles away. Bruce and Esther Treadwell.”
“Dad taught shop at the high school. Mom was a pediatric nurse. They had been trying to have a baby for nine years.”
