The theft had a beginning, and I knew it exactly, because I had traced it back to the day.

Six months before the funeral, my father had called me — quietly, almost embarrassed — about a tax notice that had arrived for an account he did not recognize.

He asked me, a little sheepishly, whether I might take a look, since numbers were my area.

I took a look.

And what I found, thread by thread, over the following weeks, was this: that Leon had held a power of attorney years earlier, for a brief period, and that our father had formally revoked it, and that Leon had simply gone on using the old, revoked document as though nothing had changed.

From there it had been a slow, patient erosion.