“We need an irrevocable trust drafted before morning.”

“Can you lock the valley property inside it so completely that he can never touch it?” I asked.

“An irrevocable trust removes the asset from your personal estate entirely,” Lin said.

“Once it’s signed, not even a power of attorney can overturn it.”

“Draft it,” I said.

“I will sign it tomorrow.”

By eight o’clock the next morning, the rain had stopped, leaving the asphalt outside Attorney Lin’s strip mall office wet and dark under a grey sky.

The desktop printer in the corner of his office hummed and clacked, spitting thirty pages of heavy cream bond paper into the tray.