Part 3 — What Ned Signed
The deputy read it off a cream-colored page and handed it to me. Ned had signed it two weeks earlier, and I had never seen it. It was a limited power of attorney in Colleens name, notarized, covering the house deed and the bank safe deposit box. It had not yet been recorded.
That was the only reason we still had a home. Dr. Abernathys friend, a veterinary toxicologist at the university, ran the tea that night. She called the deputy at nine and told him what she found, and he called the county clerk at nine-fifteen to hold anything with the Holcomb name until morning.
The tea contained a strong herbal laxative and an over-the-counter motion sickness drug, ground very fine and stirred in with the sugar. Together they cause dizziness, cramps, and shaky hands, enough to make a man look frail and agree to anything, but never enough to kill him. Pepper had a hard night and was fine by morning.
I held the old beagle in my lap in the vets office while she explained, and I cried into his ears. She said, Bernice, the dog got a bigger dose per pound than Ned ever did. He was never in danger from this. The scheme was designed to confuse, not to harm. I had been so afraid, and the relief left me weak.
Ned was another story entirely. He sat in the recliner with his chin on his chest and told us the whole thing. Colleen had asked him one afternoon to sign for a church fund. He had been too dizzy to read, and too embarrassed to say so. Everything he gave her, he gave out of kindness, which is why we would not let anyone shame him for it.
The deputy found her two days later at a bus station in Mobile, Alabama, with two suitcases and a handful of different driver licenses. Her real name was Colleen Marsh Dotson, and she had run the same routine in Springfield, Chattanooga, and Mobile. The sympathy card was a prop. Her only husband, long ago, had divorced her.
She was charged with fraud, forgery, attempted theft by deception, and exploitation of an elderly person. The power of attorney was thrown out by the county judge. The beneficiary form never made it into the insurance companys system, and the company sent us a letter confirming it was void.
Ned went to the doctor again, a good one this time, and was given a clean bill of health after three weeks without the tea. His hands steadied. His dizziness lifted. On the fourth Sunday he buttoned his own shirt and walked into church on his own two feet. I sat in the pew and watched him the entire service.
We had the locks changed anyway, and a new rule at our house: nobody gets a glass of anything unless I have poured it myself. We invited the whole street to a barbecue that summer, and we asked every guest to bring a dish. The neighbors showed up with potato salad and apologies for not noticing sooner.
Dr. Abernathy came, too, with her husband. She brought a pie. Pepper lay in the shade of the porch with his chin on her boot, and he looked ten years younger.
Near sundown Ned poured a glass of sweet tea from a pitcher I had made, from my own mothers recipe. He tasted it, raised it to me, and said, That one is right. I drank from the same pitcher, and we sat on the porch until dark.