Chapter 13 - The File With My Name
"What incapacity paperwork?" I demanded.
Dad stared at the phone as if it might bite him. Beck kept talking through the speaker. "If Emily is considered unable to manage financial decisions, the trust provides a path for a court-appointed decision-maker. We discussed this."
"You discussed declaring me incompetent?" I asked my father.
"I never agreed to that!" Dad shouted.
Beck hung up.
June asked me to bring every document Dad had received. Tucked beneath his desk calendar was a draft petition describing me as volatile, financially reckless, and capable of violence toward elderly relatives. It attached a photograph of Clara's forehead bandage and a statement supposedly signed by Dad.
"That was from the porch," I said. "They turned it into evidence before the day was over."
The statement claimed I'd threatened Clara for months. Dad read it twice, his hand trembling. "I didn't write those words."
"But is that your signature?"
He swallowed. "She brought me a page to sign. Said it confirmed the emergency call."
"You signed without reading it?"
He didn't answer.
I wanted to smash the desk lamp. Instead I photographed the complete packet while Dad watched. June arranged for the original to be preserved and told us a draft filing wasn't a court judgment, but it was evidence of what Beck and Clara intended.
At dusk, Leona called. Someone had forced the latch on her garden shed. The safe-deposit photos we'd left in a locked tool cabinet were gone, along with the spare camera equipment.
"Call the sheriff," I said. "Don't touch anything."
May you like
"I already did." Her voice lowered. "Emily, they left something behind."
Pinned to the shed wall was a copy of my mother's obituary, with my face circled in red ink.
