“The emergency legal filing includes the sworn medical report, the receipt for her forty-two-dollar inhaler, and the photo of her bruised cheek.”

“She’s my mother,” Mark choked out, his voice cracking.

“She wouldn’t do that to her own son.”

Rachel pulled her notebook from her coat pocket.

“You spent three weeks preparing an involuntary guardianship application to strip her of her legal rights, Mark.

We have those documents in the file too.”

Mark shrank back against the leather chair and fell silent, staring down at the quartz counter.

David motioned toward the living room doorway and led me three steps away from the counter, where the others couldn’t hear us.