“Richard Mitchell. Your father.”

I closed my eyes, leaning my head back against the hard plastic pillow of the hospital bed.

My father had been collecting his mother’s pension for years under the guise that she was dead to the rest of the family.

But then a terrible thought struck me.

If there was no death certificate in the federal system, how had they kept the payments going without her physical presence?

The government required annual proof-of-life verifications for pensioners over a certain age.

“Claire,” I typed, my thumbs moving faster now. “Check the annual verification forms. Who notarized them?”

A minute passed.

The rain lashed harder against the glass.

“The verification forms are uploaded digitally,” Claire replied. “They were notarized by a licensed public notary in our home county.”

“What’s the name of the notary?”

“Victoria Mitchell,” Claire sent.

My sister.

My stomach sickened.

My sister was a licensed notary public; she had been for five years.

She had been signing off on federal documents, certifying that our grandmother was alive and standing in front of her, just to keep the money flowing into my father’s hands.