Chapter 27 · Notary Who Remembered the Cross

"That's not a signature. That's a warning." Kuya Ben held the ledger page an inch from his glasses, the fan overhead ticking like a bad clock. "She only crossed the S like that when she didn't trust the man sitting across from her."

My stomach dropped. "You remember. After ten years, you actually remember."

"I notarized six hundred documents that year, iha. I don't remember faces." He tapped the little cross scratched through the loop of the S. "I remember hands."

Jae Min stood too close behind my shoulder, close enough that I felt the heat off his shirt through the humid little office, close enough that his breath moved the loose hair at my neck when he leaned in to look. I stepped sideways. He didn't let the space open back up.

"So it's real," Jae said. Not a question. A man confirming a number on a balance sheet.

"It's her hand," Kuya Ben said. "Rosa Santos. Forty percent, witnessed and sealed, February of that year.