The word on the folder was:
FAIRVIEW.
My stomach tightened.
Fairview was the assisted-living facility Colleen had mentioned on the phone.
I bent down and saw copies of admission paperwork, financial authorization forms, and a handwritten list of valuables from inside my house.
My silver chest was number seven.
Colleen lunged for the folder.
I stepped back.
“No.”
By then, Ronnie had already come around the corner.
So had Marguerite, whom I had asked to arrive at eleven with copies of every document we had saved.
Colleen’s face changed when she saw her.
Then Trevor pulled into the driveway.
He looked from the changed locks to his wife’s open car.
“What’s going on?”
I handed him the Fairview folder.
He read the first page.
Then the second.
His hands began shaking.
Colleen had been preparing to move me into assisted living and inventory my belongings before Trevor had even signed the documents she claimed were routine.
Worse, several forms contained information Trevor said he had never provided.
I called my attorney.
Then I called the police to document the property already sitting inside Colleen’s vehicle.
The silver chest came back inside with me.
The folders did too.
Trevor did not defend his wife that morning.
He simply stood in the driveway staring at paperwork that showed how close he had come to signing away control he never understood.
Colleen thought my poor eyesight made me helpless.
What she never understood was that I had stopped trusting my eyes months earlier.
That was why I had started relying on people I could actually trust.
