Mom’s Lawn Chair on My Sister’s Dock

Phil was fifty-four. He told me at Christmas he had put in applications at forty places and heard back from six.

I did not know how bad things had gotten for them. Denise never said.

She works in the front office at an elementary school in Tavares, and she does not make much, and I suppose she was ashamed. I would have been.

In early April, a month after the money moved, Denise posted pictures on Facebook. A low block house painted pale yellow, sitting on a canal off Lake Harris.

A wooden dock running out past the cypress trees to the open water. A tin roof that needed work.

“Our little slice of heaven,” she wrote under it. Two hundred people liked it. I liked it too. I thought maybe Phil had gotten a severance. You do not look for a thief in your own sister.

It was the call from Lakeside Oaks that made me think about it. The billing lady was kind.

She said Mom’s March payment had come in short, and April had not come in at all, and they had me down as the second contact on file.

So I asked Mom. And Mom, who still reads every word of every piece of paper that crosses her lap, said she had not seen a statement since January.

Denise had them sent to her house, to save Mom the trouble. Mom had thought that was thoughtful.

“Take me to the credit union,” Mom said. “It’s still my account, last I knew.”

Before we left the branch that day, the young man flagged her account so he would call Mom before anything else moved. It was all a bank could do without tipping off the agent.

I have worked in a bank for twenty-two years. Every year we take the same training on elder financial exploitation. We learn the warning signs.

A big transfer out of an older person’s account into a relative’s. Bills going unpaid. Statements redirected. I knew every one of them by heart.

I knew what it was called. In Florida, an agent under a power of attorney has to act for the person who signed it, not for herself.

Spending the money on your own house is exploitation of an elderly adult. At that amount, it is a first-degree felony. People go to prison for it.

I could not sleep that night. I knew who to call: the sheriff’s office, or the state abuse hotline.

I had the number on a card in my wallet from the last training. I set it on my kitchen table and looked at it until the sun came up.

That morning, before work, I drove to Lakeside Oaks. Mom was already dressed and sitting in her lawn chair by the window with her coffee. She looked at my face and knew I had not slept.

“Sit down, honey,” she said.

I sat on the edge of her bed. I told her what I knew, and what it was called, and that I could make one phone call that morning and the sheriff would be at Denise’s door by afternoon. I told her I thought we had to.

I told her about the slow way too. A lawyer could file in probate court, make Denise account for every dollar, and ask a judge to put a lien on that house. Mom shook her head. A lawsuit would take months, and her bill was due now.

Mom listened to all of it without interrupting. When I was done, she set her coffee cup down on the windowsill and folded her hands in her lap.