Leah Castellano walked into my room at noon sharp, carrying a leather briefcase and a cup of hospital coffee.
She’s about 50, with short dark hair and red reading glasses, and she talks fast and doesn’t waste a word. She shook my grandfather’s hand. Then she sat down on the edge of my bed and looked at my face.
“Okay,” she said. “First things first. Lily.”
She pulled out a stack of papers.
“I’ve drafted a new will and a new guardianship designation,” she said. “If anything happens to you, who do you want raising your daughter?”
I looked at my grandfather. He was 84. I couldn’t put that on him.
“My best friend, Dana Whitfield,” I said. “And her husband, Marcus. In Charlotte. She’s Lily’s godmother.”
Leah wrote it down. “And a backup?”
I thought about it. “Mrs. Okonkwo’s daughter, Adaeze. She’s a pediatric nurse. She’s offered a hundred times.”
“Good.” Leah turned the page. “Your mother is removed entirely. Your sister isn’t named. Correct?”
“Correct.”
She had me sign in four places. A hospital notary came up from the first floor, a young man named Javier, and stamped every page. Leah slipped the papers into a blue folder.
“That’s done,” she said. “Now. Tell me about the money.”
So I told her. The nine years. The automatic transfer. The credit card. The cruise. My father’s letter. The annuity.
Leah listened without interrupting. When I got to the part about the mortgage, she put down her pen and took off her red glasses.
“Meredith,” she said carefully. “You said the very first payment, eighteen months after your father died, was for a mortgage that she told you was about to go into foreclosure?”
“Yes.”
“And there was no mortgage.”
“No. It was paid off by the insurance when Dad died.”
“Do you have anything in writing from her? Texts, emails, voicemails? Anything where she said what the money was for?”
I thought about it. I pulled up my email on my phone. I searched my mother’s name from eleven years back.
There it was. From June, eleven years ago.
“Meredith, the bank sent another letter. They say if I don’t pay $1,500 by Friday they start foreclosure. Your father didn’t leave us one dime. I don’t know what else to do. Please help me. Mom.”
Leah read it twice on my phone. Then she handed it back.
“I want you to forward me that email,” she said. “And any others like it. Every single one.”
“Leah, I’m not trying to sue my own mother.”
“I’m not telling you to,” Leah said. “I’m telling you to protect yourself. Here’s what’s going to happen in about forty-eight hours. Your mother is going to find out her card doesn’t work. And she’s going to come after you. And when people like that come after you, you want every piece of paper you can get.”
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