Inadvertent Disclosure Read Free Page B

make it, her
late mentor, Noah Peterson, used to tell her. His death was a large part of the
reason that she’d left the firm and was now sitting across a sticky table in a
run-down diner four hours from anywhere.
    She shook her head. No time for
this now. She pushed thoughts of Noah and Prescott & Talbott from her mind.
    Craybill watched her, with a
blob of congealing oatmeal clinging to his lower lip.
    She dabbed at her own lips with
her paper napkin, but he didn’t take the hint.
    “You have a little, uh,
oatmeal,” she said, pointing to her mouth.
    He narrowed his eyes and wiped
his mouth.
    “So, what? Some oatmeal on my
lip?  Does that make me a drooling idiot?”
    She resisted the urge to
massage her temples and smiled too brightly.
    “Of course not. I’d want you to
tell me, though. Moving on. The petition says just after the first of this
year, the Department of Aging Services received an anonymous report that you
were unable to care for yourself. Any idea what that’s about?”
    He scowled. She waited while he
rolled back through the months. It was early April now, so it’d been over three
months since the report.
    “Well, shoot,” he finally said,
“I did fall out back. Can’t say for sure when it was. There was snow on the
ground. I was chopping firewood and . . .”
    She cut him off. “You chop your
own firewood?”
    “Yeah.”
    She checked his address on the
petition. Rural Route 2, Firetown.
    “You don’t live here in town?”
    “No. I have a place in
Firetown.”
    He said it with a short final
syllable—Firetin.
    It sounded remote.
    “You live alone out there?”
    “Since Marla died, yeah.”
    “Okay, so you fell . . .” she
prompted him.
    “Uh-huh. Got distracted
watching a truck bounce down the road that runs by my place, a water truck
going way too fast for conditions. Anyway, I slid on a patch of ice, I reckon.
Bruised my hip and twisted my wrist.”
    She took notes as fast as she
could, in her own abbreviated style. She’d come up with it in law school and it
had served her well in practice, too.
    “So, did you seek medical
treatment?”
    He shrugged. “Not really. I
mentioned it to Doc Spangler when I ran into her at the gas station. She took a
quick look, out by the pumps, and said it was probably a sprain. I wrapped it
in an ace bandage for a while and took some Tylenol for a few days, but that
was it.”
    “Is Doctor Spangler your
personal physician?”
    She chased the last bits of egg
around her plate with a piece of toast while he explained.
    “She’s the only doctor right in
town. I guess that makes her my doctor. But the last time I went to see her for
a real appointment, was, I don’t know . . . four or five years back. I’m
healthy as a horse. She took care of Marla, though.”
    Sasha looked down at her notes.
She was willing to bet the doctor, as a mandatory reporter under state
regulations, had felt she was required to report the fall to the Department of
Aging Services. Aging Services. What a name, she thought. It sounded like they
helped you get older.
    She looked up at the clock
tower once more. Fifteen minutes until show time, and she had no sense of who
her client was, what he wanted, or whether he was completely out of his gourd.
    “Okay, the way the statute
works is the lawyer for the Department of Aging Services will explain to Judge
Paulson why they think you aren’t competent to care for yourself. They have the
burden of proof. Now, they’ve asked for plenary, or complete, guardianship,
which would give them the right to make decisions about your finances, your
health, everything. The statute prefers a limited guardianship, which means the
Judge can appoint a guardian to help you out with specific issues, like money,
if he thinks you need some assistance but aren’t completely incapacitated. Are
you with me?”
    She watched his eyes, looking
for comprehension, but all she saw was anger. And lots of it.
    “Listen, girlie. I don’t want
any help. I