My mother formally revoked the power of attorney she had been deceived into signing, cutting off at the root the authority Gavin had been relying on.

Victoria saw to it that the relevant banks and institutions were notified, so that his access was closed off from the other direction as well.

And then my mother filed for divorce.

Each of these was a lawful, ordinary, unglamorous action, the kind of thing that happens every day in quiet offices, and taken together they did something that no confrontation on a lawn ever could have: they reached into the machinery Gavin had been operating and, one lever at a time, shut it down.

He had built his whole scheme on my mother’s signature and my mother’s fear.