Getting turned around.
And you live out here all alone.” A pause, letting it land.
“So here’s where we are.
You sign the transfer tonight, and nothing happens to you.
You stay in your house, everybody’s happy.
Or you don’t sign, and tomorrow morning I walk this evaluation into the county and start the process to have you declared incompetent and put under conservatorship.
Your call.”
I pressed my own hand against my mouth.
Under the table, in the dark, I did the math of what I was hearing, and it was so much worse than a bad real-estate deal that my mind kept trying to reject it.
My father was sharp as a tack.
Sharper than Damian, sharper than me on my best day.
He had never in his life seen the doctor whose name was surely printed on that evaluation — it was a fabrication, a forged instrument, and Damian was threatening to use the machinery of the courts, the very system that was supposed to protect a vulnerable old man, as a crowbar to pry the house loose.
He wasn’t only going to steal the deed.
He was prepared to have my father locked away in a state facility, stripped of the legal right to make his own decisions, to get it.