Part 3 — Marie Hangs Up
I did what Ed would have done. I did not shout, and I did not hang up in a panic. I wrote down every word, then pressed the red button gently and set the phone on the couch cushion. On Monday at nine, I sat in the office of Hannah Stein, an elder law attorney Ed had once recommended.
Hannah read my notes twice. “No one can take your decisions without a court hearing,” she said, “and no court will take them from a woman with your memory.”
She sent me to an independent neurologist and a geriatric psychologist. I scored perfectly on both. Then she drew up a living trust naming a professional trustee and a health care agent of my choosing, which turned out to be Mrs. Applebaum, my neighbor of fifteen years, who nearly cried when I asked.
Hannah also reported the plan to the Florida Department of Health. Dr. Ferris license went under formal review.
The best defense against a plan to take your voice is to use it first.
Then there was Ed other account. Hannah went through his papers with a patient eye. The account in the Caymans was not a secret love affair. It was a modest trust Ed set up in 1994 for his half-sister, Joyce Brandt, a nurse in Tampa he had met late in life. Their father family had shut Joyce out, and Ed felt ashamed of it. He never found the words to tell me.
I drove to Tampa the next Saturday. Joyce opened the door in scrubs and a cardigan, and she looked so much like Ed that I had to sit down on her step. We talked for six hours. She told me he had called her every Sunday for thirty years.
I invited Nicole to Sarasota and told her I had heard everything. She cried, and she apologized, and I believed that she meant it. I chose not to press charges. She signed an agreement giving her no access to my accounts, and she enrolled in financial counseling. Scott took a job at a hardware store, which surprised everyone.
Our Sunday FaceTime became a Sunday visit, and the phone stays in my purse during dinner.
On my lanai, Joyce and I sip sweet tea beneath Ed photograph. Mrs. Applebaum arrives with a bag of tomatoes, and we all agree that it is the best family reunion I have ever had.
