The most dangerous thing I could have done for my mother in that moment would have been to treat this as a problem I could solve alone with competence and nerve.

This was not a problem to be solved with competence and nerve.

It was a legal and financial problem, a problem of documents and statutes and courts, and the right response to it was not to be a hero but to be humble enough to go get the right expert immediately.

The instinct to call Victoria rather than to handle it myself was, in the end, worth more than any skill I personally possessed.

Chapter 10 — Everything in Her Name