Not a breaking.
A straightening.
By noon, I had made a decision.
I was not going to call Daniel.
I was not going to confront him emotionally.
I was going to call someone who understood the legal vocabulary of consequences.
Caroline Hartman had been our family attorney for years. She had handled Robert’s will after his first heart attack, the deed transfer on this house, and the long quiet paperwork that follows a death when grief is still too raw to trust yourself with signatures. She was a woman in her sixties with silver hair, dry humor, and the sort of mind that made arrogant people underestimate her right up until she dismantled them.
When she answered the phone, she sounded exactly the same as she had ten years earlier.
“Helen,” she said. “It has been too long. What’s happened?”
“I need to change my will,” I said. “And revoke every power of attorney that has my son’s name on it.”
