Chapter 5
"Oh, they’ll attend," Thomas assured me. "Vance believes they’re about to seize control of a two-million-dollar estate before you 'squander' it. They wouldn't miss it for the world."
The next two weeks passed with a strange, crystalline serenity.
Without the constant hum of anxiety—without waiting by the landline, without checking my cell phone every ten minutes to see if a text had come through, without wondering what I had done wrong to make my own flesh and blood despise my presence—I felt decades younger.
I baked bread. I took long walks in the brisk winter air with my neighbor, Clara, whose company I had neglected for years because I had been so utterly consumed by the emotional breadcrumbs my children tossed me. I read novels by the fire. And, alongside Thomas, I finalized the last few details of the transition that had started on the day I walked out of Saint Joseph Hospital alone.
The morning of January 8th arrived cold and gray, the Denver skyline framed by jagged peaks covered in fresh powder.
The probate courtroom on the third floor of the city-county building was austere and quiet. When Thomas and I walked in, Jennifer, Michael, and Lisa were already seated at the petitioner’s table, flanking their attorney, a slick man in an overly tailored pinstripe suit who carried himself with the smug confidence of someone who had never lost an inheritance dispute against an aging widow.
Jennifer looked polished, dressed in a sharp black business suit designed to make her appear responsible and grounded. Michael wore a dark blazer, tapping his polished leather shoe against the carpet in nervous rhythm. Lisa sat with her hands folded, looking down her nose at me as I entered.
Not one of them looked me in the eye. They looked at my clothes. They looked at my posture. They looked for frailty.
I didn't give it to them. I wore my tailored emerald-green coat, my hair neatly pinned, my chin held high. I carried neither a cane nor a tremor.
"All rise," the bailiff called out.
Judge Maria Alvarez took the bench. She was a woman in her late fifties, with sharp, observant dark eyes and a reputation for tolerating no nonsense in her courtroom. She adjusted her glasses, opened the heavy docket folder before her, and glanced across the room.
"Petition for Temporary Emergency Conservatorship over Margaret Mitchell," Judge Alvarez read aloud. "Filed by Jennifer Mitchell, Michael Mitchell, and Lisa Mitchell-Hayes. Counsel, state your appearances."