After Nancy left, I sat on the narrow bed and stared at the suitcase Dominic had packed.
Three dresses.
Undergarments.
Toiletries.
A few personal items.
And one framed photograph of Harold and me on our wedding day.
That was all.
Sixty-two years of living reduced to one suitcase.
Dinner was meatloaf, mashed potatoes, and vegetables cooked until they barely had shape.
I sat with three strangers.
Margaret talked constantly about a grandson who never visited.
Rose reorganized her pills over and over.
Edward slept through most of the meal.
I ate everything.
Not because I liked it.
Because I needed my strength.
That night, lying awake beneath unfamiliar sheets, I listened to the building around me.
Someone crying in the hallway.
The elevator groaning.
A cart rolling over linoleum.
Footsteps passing my door.
Only then did I allow myself to understand what Dominic had truly taken.
Not just my house.
My independence.
My choices.
My dignity.
My right to decide what happened to the remaining years of my life.
And he had done it while pretending it was for my own good.
But sometime after midnight, anger began replacing grief.
Dominic had made one serious mistake.
He believed I was helpless.
I wasn’t.
He didn’t know about the safe deposit box Harold and I had maintained.
He didn’t know about the separate savings I had built through life-insurance money, part-time library work, and years of careful saving.
And he certainly didn’t know how much attention I had paid to our finances while Harold was sick.
Dominic also didn’t understand something else.
I remembered the power of attorney.
Very clearly.
It had been limited.
I had made certain of that.
The paper Dominic showed me that morning had looked wrong.
The formatting.
The signature placement.
Even the paper itself.
Could my son have altered the document?
Could he have forged my authority to sell the house?
Lying there in the dark, I felt the first hint of a smile.
If he had, then Dominic had far bigger problems than he realized.
I met Dorothy the following morning.
