“Let’s get inside.”
Caroline opened the door before we reached it.
She hugged me without asking questions.
Her husband, Paul, appeared from the kitchen carrying three mugs of tea.
There were blankets on the sofa and a plate of cookies on the coffee table.
Such ordinary kindness nearly undid me.
For months, I had begun to believe that being old meant becoming a burden.
Yet here were people making room for me without expecting anything in return.
Emily sat beside me and pulled out her phone.
“I didn’t delete the photographs,” she said.
I looked at her.
“Sweetheart, you don’t have to discuss this tonight.”
“Yes, I do.”
Her voice trembled, but she held my gaze.
“Mom said you were losing your memory. She told Dad you were confused about money. But I knew you weren’t.”
She opened a folder of photographs.
The first showed an authorization bearing my forged signature.
The second showed an application to a private assisted-living residence.
The third was worse.
It was a preliminary contract for the sale of my home.
The proposed purchase price was $1.4 million.
I stared at the number.
Arthur and I had bought that property for less than one-tenth of its current value.
We had spent decades repairing walls, replacing windows, paying taxes, and making the house beautiful one paycheck at a time.
Brooke intended to sell it as though it were nothing more than an inconvenience standing between her and a fortune.
Then Emily opened another photograph.
It was a bank statement.
A transfer of $187,000 had been made from an account I didn’t recognize to a company called BRI Holdings.
Brooke’s initials.
I felt sick.
