But three weeks after it expired, a new one had been filed.
A durable, permanent power of attorney, granting my father full authority over all her finances and — this was the part that made my blood run cold — decisions about her housing and medical care.
Her signature was on it.
“I never signed that,” Grandma said quietly.
She held the document up to the light, the way I’d later learn forensic people do.
“Look at the E in Eleanor. I’ve signed my name a quarter million times in my life. I don’t loop it like that. This is a forgery, Ivan. Your father forged my signature on a permanent power of attorney, and then he used it to empty my accounts and check me into a facility.”
She set the paper down.
“Now I understand the lunch.”
“The garden,” I said.
“The garden,” she agreed. “He needed me institutionalized and declared incompetent before I noticed the money was gone. A woman in a facility, labeled forgetful, isn’t a credible witness against her own son.
