I read the file twice on a Thursday and both times I felt something like vertigo.

Because it is the fact pattern. Elderly principal. Long-serving caregiver. A distribution that reallocates a family estate toward someone outside the bloodline.

Adult children who allege undue influence. A lawyer’s opinion in the file saying the client is competent.

I sat with my grandmother’s framed check on the wall behind me and read a file about a man I had never met and could not decide about.

I went and saw him twice.

Walter Ozuna is sharp. He is also lonely in a way that is difficult to overstate — his children call at Christmas and on his birthday and they have visited three times in nine years, and I checked that, and it is true.