Chapter 4: What Patricia Found
Patricia arrived at five minutes to two.
I had known her for thirty-one years.
We had met at a church fundraiser the year after her husband qualified as a solicitor, and we had remained close friends through retirements, bereavements, and the ordinary difficult passages of long lives.
She was seventy-two now, still sharp, still direct, and the moment I opened the front door she looked at my face and said, "Show me."
I brought her to the kitchen.
I placed the document in front of her.
She sat down, put on her reading glasses, and read every word without speaking.
Vanessa appeared in the doorway within three minutes.
She was wearing a composed expression that I had learned to distrust.
"I'm sorry," Vanessa said, "I don't think we've met."
"Patricia Hale," Patricia said without looking up from the page.
"Are you a friend of Margaret's?"
"I am." Patricia turned to page two.
"I'll be a few minutes."
"This is a private family matter—"
"Then it's fortunate," Patricia said, finally looking up, "that Margaret invited me into her home.
Her home." She held Vanessa's gaze for one steady moment, then returned to the document.
Vanessa looked at me.
I said nothing.
She left.
Patricia finished reading.
She set the document down and removed her glasses.
"Where did this come from?"
"I found it on the kitchen table this morning.
Daniel was on the phone when I came downstairs.
He was saying they might have to move faster."
"He said that."
"Yes."
Patricia was quiet for a moment.
"Margaret, the document itself has not been executed.
Your signature isn't on it.
Which means it's a draft — or a copy being held in advance of asking you to sign."
"They were waiting for the right moment."
"That would be my reading." She paused.
"But I need to tell you something, and I want you to stay calm when I do."
My hands were already flat on the table.
"Tell me."
"This firm — Hartwell and Associates — I recognized the name.
A colleague of my husband's dealt with them eighteen months ago.
They have a particular specialty." She paused.
"They handle estate restructuring for families where an elderly relative has been assessed as having reduced capacity."
The room was very quiet.
"Assessed by whom?" I asked.
"A doctor.
Usually one the family has found privately." Patricia looked at me directly.
"Margaret, for a Power of Attorney of this scope to be valid, it generally needs to be accompanied by a capacity assessment — or the solicitor needs to be satisfied one is forthcoming."
I thought about what Vanessa had said that morning.
The kettle.
The reading glasses.
The careful list of small, ordinary things reframed as symptoms.
"She's been building a record," I said.
"It appears so."
I stood up and walked to the window.
The garden was grey and still.
The roses I had planted with my husband in 1989 were bare at this time of year, just dark stems against the wall.
"Is there anything else?" I asked.
"In the document.
Anything I missed."
Patricia was quiet for a moment too long.
I turned around.
She had the third page open on the table.
There was a yellow sticky note I hadn't noticed before, folded back against the margin.
She carefully unfolded it.
Her expression changed.
"There's a reference number," she said slowly.
"To a second file.
A different matter at the same firm."
"What matter?"
She read the handwritten note on the sticky.
Then she looked up at me.
May you like
"Margaret," she said quietly.
"I think they've already been to see someone about your will."
