Chapter 8: Stabilizing
My mother and I settled into a short-term rental that Claire’s office helped secure under terms that kept the address off any joint record.
Margaret recovered in the practical ways that mattered: regular meals, uninterrupted sleep, no raised voices in the next room. She asked only once whether I regretted walking out. I told her the five seconds in the apartment had been enough. She did not ask again.
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Claire’s preliminary forensic summary arrived at the end of the second week. The largest transfers had been structured to look routine until the cumulative total became impossible to ignore. Several destination accounts were already under preservation requests. The $10,500 desk-drawer claim still had no corresponding deposit trail that supported Brandon’s story. The timing—accusation against my mother followed within days by the discovery of the larger depletion—remained a central point in Claire’s notes.
I authorized the next set of recovery motions without comment.
