Grandma smiled her stone-cold smile.
“Good,” she said. “I have some things to say to my son. It’s only right I say them where witnesses can hear.”
PART 4
The hearing was two weeks later.
My father walked in expecting to defend a competency petition against a confused old woman.
He had a lawyer, and a strategy, and a folder of “evidence” that Grandma was declining — including, I later learned, a copy of the deed he’d taken from her house, which he didn’t yet know was worthless.
He did not expect his mother to walk in on her own two feet, sharp as a blade, flanked by a senior partner from the firm she’d run for thirty-one years.
He did not expect me to be sitting beside her.
And he really did not expect what Margaret laid on the table.
“Your Honor,” Margaret began, “opposing counsel intends to argue that Mrs. Eleanor Sterling is incompetent and requires her son’s guardianship. We’re going to make this brief.
