Son present, did most of the talking. Asked signer to confirm alone — she did, twice, clearly. Sixteen words in a margin, dated, in a woman’s small upright hand. A working notary who had never met any of us had noticed exactly the thing my half-brother would build a lawsuit on three years later, and had noticed it in the opposite direction, and had written it down before she’d left the driveway.
She testified in September. She’s sixty-three, she’s done this for twenty-nine years, and she said she writes a margin note maybe once a month — when something in a room makes her want a record. She said she’d stepped my mother out to the kitchen and asked her plainly whether she understood and whether anyone was pressuring her, and my mother had said no and had explained the transfer back to her in her own words, which is the entire test and which my mother passed.
Then she was asked whether she remembered him. She said yes. She said he’d asked her twice how long the transfer would take to record and had wanted to know whether it could be reversed. That answer is in the transcript and it is the reason the petition was dismissed with prejudice in November rather than settled quietly in March like everybody’s attorney assumed it would be.
He hasn’t called. I don’t expect it. What stays with me is that a stranger sat in my mother’s living room for forty minutes in 2021 and paid close enough attention to protect her from something none of us saw coming, and then went home and had dinner and thought nothing more about it. I sent her a card in December. She wrote back one line: that it’s the whole point of the book, and that most people never find out theirs exists.
