For twenty-two years, my signature meant one thing: I looked, and I told the truth.
My husband sold that signature to the highest bidder.
He forged my name onto paintings I never saw. He taught my own protégée to sign like me.
He hung a fake in the biggest room in the trade, under a certificate that reversed a verdict I'd already written.
Then he planned to retire me quietly. Tired wife, unreliable records, replaced by the girl who forged her.
Everyone was told I was winding down.
They forgot I write everything down.
Forty-one notebooks. Numbered pages. Sewn bindings. Dated to the hour.
He bet my books stayed shut.
I opened them in the one room where it counts, on preview night, in front of the whole trade.
The fourteenth of March. That's when it started.
Everything since has just been the paperwork.