Then she took it.
“Wendy,” she said.
Her voice was even.
Not warm, not cold.
Even.
“I believe you didn’t know all of it.
I do.” A pause.
“But you drove me to that facility.
You told me they had a lovely garden.
You walked me through that door.”
Wendy’s voice came through the phone, small and broken.
I couldn’t make out the words.
“I know,” Grandma said.
“I know.” She listened for another moment.
“We’ll talk.
Not today.
But we’ll talk.”
She handed the phone back to me.
Wendy had already hung up.
Grandma stood and carried her cup to the sink.
She rinsed it.
Set it in the drying rack.
“I’m going to lie down for an hour,” she said.
“Then I’d like to go back to my house.”
“The police may still —”
“I want to sit on my porch,” she said.
“In my chair.” She paused.
“The one that’s left.”
I nodded.
She went down the hallway.
I heard the bedroom door close softly.
I sat at the table alone for a while.
Then I got up and started making lunch — something simple, something she would actually eat.
I found bread and soup and the good crackers she liked, the ones I’d started keeping in my cabinet two years ago without ever really thinking about why.
When she came back out an hour later, the table was set.
She sat down.
Looked at the bowl.
Looked at me.
“You’re a good boy, Ivan,” she said.
The property transfer reversal was filed on Thursday.
Detective Okafor called to confirm it herself.
Arthur was formally charged with elder financial @buse, fraudulent use of power of attorney, and unauthorized access to financial accounts.
Gerald Holt faced the same charges, plus additional counts related to the other clients identified in the investigation.
Holt’s law license was suspended pending the outcome.
I didn’t read the news articles.
Grandma asked me not to tell her the details unless she asked.
She asked once: “Will he go to prison?”
“Probably,” I said.
