I was there because my grandfather had left me his duplex on the north side along with a small investment account that my mother desperately wanted for herself. “The records are fake, and the stories are just a way to make a dying man feel sorry for her,” she told the court.
I spent seven years as an Army combat medic and I still know exactly what trauma shears sound like when they are cutting through a blood-soaked uniform. I can still remember the copper smell that rises instantly when blood hits hot fabric in the middle of a dusty afternoon.
What I never learned during all those years of training was how to stand perfectly still while the person who raised me tried to erase my life. After my final deployment I came home with pieces of metal still lodged in my shoulder and a stack of records I kept locked in a closet.
I kept my dog tags wrapped in my grandfather’s old silk handkerchief at the bottom of my purse because I could no longer handle the sound of that metallic click. My attorney was a woman named Gwen Fletcher who wore sharp suits and spoke with a calm voice that never seemed to waver under pressure.