General Power of Attorney. Five pages that said Edward could be me in every bank, every contract, every courtroom, my name a hollowed-out shell he could climb inside. Three weeks earlier, I had signed it groggy from surgery while he fluffed my pillows and called it “insurance paperwork,” kissing my forehead like a benediction. Now my son’s midnight confession snapped every clause into place: a backyard conversation he’d overheard, three days to “go to the bank and do everything,” and a woman named Sylvia who laughed when Edward promised, “She’ll be gone; I’ll have all the signatures.” I played the dutiful wife at breakfast, coffee poured, bag by the stairs, while he smiled the satisfied smile of a man whose trap is set and already closed. After he left, the mailbox offered the next layer: a notarized affidavit bearing three names—mine, his, and Sylvia’s—and, stapled behind it, a psychiatric appointment with a doctor I’d never met. Eleanor, my college roommate turned family-law predator, texted back four words that turned my kitchen into a battlefield: He’s building incompetency docu… Continues…