The recordings continued through multiple meetings—with the lawyer, with a financial adviser, even with a doctor they planned to have evaluate me.

The level of calculation was breathtaking.

They’d thought of everything, from fabricating evidence of confusion to isolating me from friends who might notice something was wrong.

The final recording was just the two of them, alone in their hotel room.

“Once we get control, we should move her into assisted living right away,” Philip was saying.

“That house has to be worth at least eight hundred thousand in today’s market.”