“Mom,” I said in the parking lot. “If I take all of this apart tonight, in front of an audience, can you stand next to me while I do it?”

She looked at her split knuckles for a long moment. “I’ve been humiliated for fourteen months, Iris. One more night won’t kill me. It might cure me.”

At three o’clock we walked into Tom Beran’s office. I unzipped the backpack and laid the creased warranty deed on his desk.

Over the next hour we built the instrument.

First, the life estate trust. The property went into it, giving Ellen Holloway an absolute, irrevocable right to live there until her death — proof against creditors, bankruptcies, and her son.

Second, I shredded my old will, which had split everything between Mom and Derek. The new one routes it all to my mother, and after her, to a nursing scholarship in my parents’ names.