The woman laid a single sheet on Marek Veyr's table. It said her husband had given up his claim to the workers' relief fund. At the bottom was his signature. Above it was a date from the week he lay in a hospital bed with both hands wrapped in gauze.
"They told me he changed his mind," she said.
Marek did not ask who had sent her. He knew the paper. Seven years earlier, a broker had brought him a stack of forms and a photograph of one man's handwriting. Marek had needed the money and had told himself the forms were part of a private dispute. He had never asked who would lose if the signatures held.
Now the man was dead, and his wife, Ada, had been turned away from the fund twice. The broker had offered Marek a second payment that morning. All he had to do was say the signature looked genuine. He would be believed. He had spent years teaching people to trust his eye.
Ada watched him read. Outside, rainwater ran along the window frame and dripped into a jar on the floor. Marek set the form beside the hospital record she had brought. The dates were enough to raise a question. They were not enough to tell her who had written her husband's name.
"I did," he said.
She stood so suddenly that the chair struck the wall. Marek did not ask her to sit down. He gave her the broker's letter and told her when he had been paid. He kept no copy for himself. At the hearing the next day, Ada arrived with the hospital nurse who had changed her husband's bandages. Marek arrived alone.
He could have called the signature a mistake and walked away. Instead, he told the room exactly what he had done. He answered every question, including the ones that put his own name in the record. The hearing stopped. The fund reopened Ada's claim and began reviewing the other forms from the same batch.
Afterward, Ada passed him on the courthouse steps. She did not thank him. "You should have come sooner," she said.
"I should have," Marek answered.
He watched her go, then walked back inside to give his statement to the investigator waiting at the desk.