“Thank you for joining us,” Ms. Christofferson said, her hands clasped together as she gazed around the room.

We did a round of introductions of a bunch of lawyers and their positions within the company and how they would be helpful on my case, all of which I forgot the moment they said them. My heart was in my throat, my anxiety level through the roof, waiting to hear what these experts had to say. I was also eager to hear how we would approach the case with the authorities and the new information as it pertained to our parents’ deaths.

Within moments of the last introduction, my lawyer tapped a button on a hand-held remote and a movie screen lowered from the ceiling to cover the far wall.

“First, I’d like to have our experts go over their findings,” Ms. Christofferson announced. “We will begin with the graphologist, Mr. Ayers.”

A gray-haired man of somewhere north of sixty years old stood and approached the front of the room. He wore silver, wireframed glasses and held a laser pointer.

“If you’d direct your attention to the screen,” he announced, reminding me of when I was in college and the professors would stand in front of these large screens or whiteboards as they went over the coursework. “The image on the left is Rachel and Lewis Myers’ signature on the first submission of their wills.” Another image popped up right next to it. “This is the second submission, provided three years after the first.”

“They both look almost identical.” Giovanni stated flatly.

“That is correct,” the expert confirmed and posted another picture next to the first two. “The third was submitted roughly four years after the second.”

I squinted at the three signatures. “Again, they definitely look like they were signed by the same people. Except there’s a little loop on my mother’s Y in Myers where it was straight thefirst two times,” I noted, my stomach fluttering at seeing my parents’ names and signatures again.

“Yes, but that’s not uncommon for people who have letters such as Y, G, Q, Z in their name. It’s also not uncommon for signatures to take on a sloppy approach if people are in a hurry or signing their name quickly. Regardless, there are still consistent identifiers that prove these were done by the same person. The way the pen rests longer in specific spots leaving more ink is a distinct marker we look for.” He used something on the laser pointer that highlighted sections of each signature on both their names in each of the three documents. “See it now?”

All of the spots where a pen would have left a darker impression were the same.

“Fascinating,” I whispered.

“It absolutely is.” Mr. Ayers smiled and seemed to stand a little taller at my praise. “Now for the fourth, that was submitted only a year after their last one…”

“Which already is suspicious, as you know, when taking into consideration the timing of their deaths only a week later,” Ms. Christofferson added.

I reached out blindly and Giovanni was there, his warm hand enveloping mine, keeping me grounded. I tightened my grip as I stared at the screen, trying to find the differences in the four signatures.

“They…they look the same to me.” I said while clinging to my husband for support.

Giovanni pushed his chair closer, so that I could feel his leg and shoulder touching mine. He was staring intently at the screen. “I don’t see the differences either.”

Ayers’ eyes lit up. “That’s where we come in. Look here and here at those same impressions I showed you before.” He pointed to the ink blots on the screen.

We both stared at the first, second, third and then the fourth signature. The first three had those resting spots with more ink within the signature when magnified. The fourth, however, did not.

“That can’t be all?” Giovanni asked. “I wouldn’t imagine a court case can be won on this alone.”

The expert shook his head. “There’s more. Look at how Lewis was written on each. There’s one thing missing on the fourth.” He pointed to the little dot above the letter I in Lewis. The fourth was missing the dot above the letter. “People with this particular letter in their name rarely forget to dot it. Especially since we can prove with many, many samples of his signature that he’d never forgotten it before.”

“Interesting. Okay, so we have two discrepancies. Anything else?” I asked.

“Do you see the R in your mother’s name? Look closely at the level of ink spread across each R.”

I shook my head, not understanding. “You can tell your mother started writing her name from the top to the bottom. Meaning, she’d start her R from the top, went down, then traced the line back up, doubling the line in the first letter. See,” he pointed to the slight doubling of the line in each R that could only be seen when magnified. There, plain as day was a double line for each R. The fourth didn’t have one.

“You can tell the person who signed the fourth document started from the bottom. I’ve been a forensic handwriting expert my entire career. Not a single person has ever reversed where they start writing their letters. It isn’t natural to their unique handwriting DNA. But it is very common for someone who is tracing one’s signature to do it the wrong way. Say by holding it up to a glass window or a light. Let me show you.”

He walked over to us and put down a piece of paper and a pen. “Mr. Falco, would you be so kind as to sign your name on this sheet of paper.”

Giovanni took the pen and signed his name with a flourish.

“Now you, Mrs. Falco.” He shifted the same page to me.

I scribbledJulianne Myers-Falco.

Ayers took the sheet of paper, walked right over to the glass window and put a blank sheet on top of it. He slowly traced both signatures before placing them on the table under some device that displayed the pages on the screen.