“They brought in a doctor,” he told me. “Some friend of your father’s. Dr. Haskell. He came to the rehab center for twenty minutes. Asked me what year it was, and I said the wrong year, because I’d just woken up from a nap and I was groggy. He wrote that down. Then he left. Next thing I knew, I was here. And everything I owned belonged to your mother.”
“Didn’t you fight it?”
He laughed, but there was nothing funny in it.
“With what? They had my checkbook. They had my phone. They had a lawyer. I had a walker and a speech therapist.” He shook his head. “I tried calling my old attorney. Your mother had already let him go. I tried writing letters to the court. I don’t know where they went. Probably the same place my letters to you went.”
I sat back on my heels on the floor of that room and felt something cold settle in my stomach.
