I told them yes. That was the trick. Sitting at the table, I accepted the Birchwood brochure and told Roland and Delphine I would move in the new year. They left believing they had finally won. They did not know the house had already sold, the closing was nine days away, and their deposit was tied to a room I would never enter.
I never confronted them. At sixty-seven, I wanted something more valuable than watching my son’s face collapse: I wanted never to see him again. My lawyer revoked the power of attorney, and the house money and Warren’s investments bought me a small cottage two states away under my maiden name. When Roland arrived in January to move me into Birchwood, he found strangers repainting the study, a note from my lawyer, and an empty house. But while I had escaped my son, I had also disappeared from two grandchildren who had never treated me like a burden.
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