…Travis Moore. I didn’t recognize the name, so I looked him up in the parking lot. He was a notary. He was also Bonnie’s son.
The transfer had been signed in March, two weeks after Grandpa’s stroke, when he could barely hold a fork. His signature on the document was a shaky line that didn’t even finish his last name.
I understood, then, why he’d said not to tell my mom. My mom had hired Bonnie, through a friend at church, and she trusted her completely. If I told her, she’d call Bonnie that night to ask what was going on, and Bonnie would know.
So I called a lawyer who handles elder law, and she called Adult Protective Services. An investigator came to Grandpa’s house on a Wednesday, while Bonnie was there, with a doctor. The doctor sat with Grandpa for an hour. The investigator asked Bonnie for the medication logs.
The logs didn’t match the pills. For months, Bonnie had been giving him a sedative his doctor never prescribed. On the days he took it, he couldn’t hold a conversation. On the days he didn’t, he’d been writing notes and hiding them in the pill organizer, waiting for me.
The doctor confirmed he hadn’t had the capacity to sign anything in March. The lawyer filed to undo the trust, and the court froze the house within a week. Bonnie and Travis are both facing charges now.
I told my mom that night, once it was safe. She sat in her car outside Grandpa’s house and cried, and then she went in and held his hand for three hours. She hasn’t stopped apologizing to him. He keeps telling her she was fooled, not wrong.
Grandpa has a new aide now, through an agency, and he’s sharper than he’s been in a year. Last Sunday, when I was leaving, he pressed something into my palm again. A pill organizer. I opened Sunday in the car. Inside was a strip of paper in his handwriting, a little steadier now: “Thank you. Same time next week.”
