I sat in that little room at Haddonfield National Bank for almost an hour.
Doris finally knocked on the door and brought me a cup of water and a box of Kleenex.
“Is everything all right, honey?”
I looked up at her.
“She knew,” I said. “She knew everything.”
Doris sat down across from me.
“She sat right there in that chair eight months ago,” Doris said, “and she told me, ‘Doris, when Rosalyn comes in with that key, you be gentle with her. She’s going to have been through it.'”
I called Harold Abernathy from the parking lot.
He’s eighty-two. He still goes into his office on Kings Highway three days a week. He answered on the first ring.
“Mrs. Whitaker,” he said. “I’ve been waiting for your call. I’m so sorry about Gertrude.”
“Mr. Abernathy,” I said. “I just read her letter.”
“Then you know.” He paused. “She was the sharpest client I’ve had in fifty years. Even at the end. Especially at the end.”
He told me everything.
The revocation of the power of attorney was filed with the bank eight months ago. Christopher hadn’t touched Gertrude’s accounts since then. He probably thought it was a technical glitch.
Gertrude’s will was airtight. Signed in Harold’s office. Witnessed by two of his staff. With letters from her primary care doctor, her neurologist, and a psychiatrist all confirming she had full capacity to make her decisions.
“She insisted on the psychiatrist,” Harold said. “She said, ‘Christopher’s going to say I was confused. Let’s take that off the table.'”
The documentation of the money Christopher took was all there. Every withdrawal. Every check he wrote to himself. Every credit card payment.
“Mrs. Whitaker,” Harold said gently. “There’s something else. When Gertrude came to me, she asked me to look into whether what Christopher did was a crime.”
“Was it?”
“Using a power of attorney for your own benefit, without the person’s permission, is financial exploitation of an elderly person,” Harold said. “In New Jersey, that’s a crime. Gertrude decided not to report it while she was alive. She didn’t want her son arrested while she was still breathing.”
He paused.
“She left the decision to you.”
I sat in my car in the bank parking lot, holding that pink envelope against my chest.
“I need a few days,” I said.
“Take all the time you need,” Harold said. “He can’t touch anything now.”
Sophia Rivers is an experienced News Content Editor with a sharp eye for detail and a passion for delivering accurate and engaging news stories. At TheArchivists, she specializes in curating, editing, and presenting news content that informs and resonates with a global audience.
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