Jason slid papers across the desk.
“He presented documents stating you were no longer capable of managing your own finances. He requested closure of your primary account and transfer of the assets into a new supervisory trust.”
For a moment, the room narrowed.
I heard the hum of the air conditioner, the muted trill of a desk phone outside the office, someone laughing softly near the tellers’ counter. It all seemed very far away.
“He said I was what?” I asked.
Jason’s face tightened.
“In early cognitive decline,” he said quietly. “The paperwork stated probable dementia.”
The word did not feel real. Not because I was too vain to imagine such a thing, but because the accusation had not come from medicine or observation or time. It had come from my son, folded into a plan.
I lowered my eyes to the documents.
There it was. My name written in a shaky imitation of my own hand. A medical note from a clinic in Atlanta I had never visited. A doctor whose name meant nothing to me. A notary stamp a little too smudged, a little too rushed. And at the bottom, neat and clean and typed with astonishing confidence: Daniel Whitmore.
