Chapter 7: The Morning After the Night Before
I did not sleep well.
That was honest.
I lay in the bed that Richard and I had shared for thirty-one years and I looked at the ceiling and I went over the evening the way you go over a document you need to understand completely before you sign anything.
By five in the morning I had stopped trying to sleep.
I made tea and sat at the kitchen table with the folded document in front of me and my phone beside it.
At seven, I called my solicitor.
His name was Patrick Hale, and he had handled Richard's estate and the house transfer and every legal matter I'd had for the past eleven years.
His assistant said he had a cancellation at ten.
I took it.
At eight-fifteen, my phone rang.
Daniel.
I let it ring.
He called again at eight-forty.
I let that one ring too.
At nine, a text came through.
*Mom.
I need to talk to you.
Please.
Not about money.
About last night.
Please call me.*
I read it twice.
Then I put the phone face-down on the table and went to get dressed.
Patrick Hale's office was in a low brick building near the town centre, the kind of office that had been there long enough to feel permanent.
His assistant brought me tea without asking, which I had always liked about the place.
Patrick came in, shook my hand, and sat down across from me.
He was sixty-three, careful, and had the particular quality of a person who had heard a great many difficult things without being surprised by any of them.
I put the document on his desk.
He read it.
He read it a second time.
Then he set it down and looked at me.
"When did you first see this?" he asked.
"Last night."
"And you had no prior knowledge of any contact between this firm and anyone representing your interests?"
"None."
He turned the document over, examined the letterhead, made a small note on his pad.
"I know this solicitor.
He's legitimate — which in some ways makes this more concerning, not less.
He wouldn't have started this process without believing he had some basis for it."
"What kind of basis?"
"A representation that you had agreed in principle.
Or that you lacked capacity to manage your own affairs." He said it carefully, watching my face.
I felt the word land.
Capacity.
"She told them I couldn't manage my own affairs," I said.
"I don't know that yet.
But it's a possibility we should take seriously." He picked up his pen.
"I'm going to make some calls today.
I want to find out exactly what was represented to this solicitor and by whom.
In the meantime, I'd like you to consider two things."
"Go ahead."
"First — do you have a current power of attorney in place?
One that you chose and trust?"
"No.
Richard and I always meant to do it.
We never got around to it."
"Then we should do that now.
Today, if possible.
You choose the person.
It goes on record.
It closes the door on anyone else attempting to establish one without your knowledge."
"And the second thing?"
Patrick looked at the document again.
"The second thing is whether you want to pursue this formally.
What was done here — representing to a solicitor that a client had agreed to a process she knew nothing about — that's potentially serious.
It may constitute fraud, depending on exactly what was said."
The word sat between us.
Fraud.
"She's my son's wife," I said.
"I know." He didn't add anything to that.
He just waited.
I looked at the document on his desk.
My name in that field, put there by someone who had sat across from me at Christmas dinner and called me by my first name and accepted money from me on more occasions than I could count.
"Tell me what my options are," I said.
"All of them."
Patrick nodded and opened a fresh page on his notepad.
We talked for an hour and twenty minutes.
When I left, I had signed a new power of attorney — in favour of my sister Margaret, who lived forty minutes away and had never once asked me for anything — and Patrick had three calls to make before the end of the day.
My phone showed two more missed calls from Daniel and one from a number I didn't recognize.
I called the unknown number back from the car park, because I had learned last night that not knowing was more dangerous than knowing.
It rang twice.
"Mrs.
Marsh?" A man's voice.
Smooth, unhurried, the kind of voice that had learned to sound patient.
May you like
"My name is Marcus Garrett.
I think it's time we had a conversation."
