Then I handed them a copy of the letter and the deeds.
The daughter was the first to go pale, her hand moving to her chest.
“This can’t be legal.”
“Yes, it is,” I said with a calmness I didn’t know I had. “Your mother had everything notarized three months ago. I went with her.”
It was true. One afternoon she had asked me to take her to see “a lawyer” downtown. I had thought it was just some routine paperwork, some bureaucratic matter that came with aging. It wasn’t. She had been planning all of this—setting things in order, making sure that what she wanted to happen after her death would actually happen.
The eldest son clenched his teeth so hard I could see the muscle in his jaw.
“You manipulated a sick old woman,” he said, his voice tight with rage and something else—perhaps the understanding that his mother had chosen to leave everything to a stranger rather than to her own blood.
