Somerville may not survive another forty-eight hours,” he said gravely.

“Any pending estate or legal matters should be handled today.”

It was bait, and Devon took it whole.

He left the hospital and came back an hour later carrying a black leather briefcase.

He walked into my father’s room, closed the door, and laid three documents out on the rolling tray table — a general power of attorney, a transfer of deed on our summer house at Lake Geneva, and a change-of-beneficiary form on a stack of life-insurance policies.

Every one of them was backdated to the day before the stroke, so that he could later claim my father had signed them of his own free will while he still had it.