The realtor turned the page so I could read the name of the buyer Craig had secretly accepted a cash offer from on Friday night, and Becky grabbed my hand. The buyer was an LLC called North Shore Holdings. And North Shore Holdings was Craig.
My son did not hold an open house to find a buyer, he held it as a show, because he had already agreed to sell my house to a company he owned himself, cheap, so he could pocket the difference when he turned around and sold it for what it was really worth.
The realtor had already refused to sell. I cant sell this house, not after this, she said. The first paper Becky handed her revoked the power of attorney Craig was holding, signed and notarized in my hospital bed, and that same morning my doctor had written in my chart that I was alert, oriented, and making my own decisions. The second paper named Becky as my agent instead, and she had already mailed Craig a certified copy that was sitting in his mailbox in Minneapolis the whole time. Craig had signed a listing on a house he had no right to sell.
Then the realtor pulled out the offer he accepted Friday night, from a buyer he brought her himself, and that was the part that showed what he was really doing.
I am Ida. I am eighty years old. I sorted mail at the Duluth post office for thirty-one years, and I have lived in the same yellow house on the hill over Lake Superior since 1971, the porch my husband built with his own two hands. I have three children. Craig sells cars in Minneapolis, Pamela calls on my birthday from Arizona, and Becky, my youngest, a nursing aide, drove over every single day after her shift for six years, my pills, my groceries, my hair on Sunday mornings.
In February I broke my hip on the ice, and Craig and Pamela flew in and went to Beckys apartment first for a family meeting. Nursing home for me, sell the house, split it two ways. Why two ways, Becky asked. Because youve been living off Mom for six years, Craig said. Becky voted no. Two to one. Then they came to my room with a power of attorney I signed in 2015, and Craig told the nurse, dont bother explaining, she wont remember this conversation anyway.
I did not argue. I looked at the lake. But that Thursday, while Craig and Pam were at the realtors office, a woman with a briefcase came to my room, and Becky held my hand, and I signed two papers and the woman stamped them, and nobody told Craig.
A power of attorney you have revoked is a dead piece of paper, and a competent woman does not need her children to sell her house. My doctor put my competence in writing the same morning. Craig listed and sold a house that was never his to touch, and he sold it to himself through an LLC for far less than it was worth, which is self-dealing, and theft, dressed up in a company name.
Selling your mothers house out from under her, using a revoked power of attorney, to a shell company you own, is fraud, and a certified letter sitting in your own mailbox proving you were warned does not help your case.
The sale was void. The realtor pulled her sign out of my lawn herself. Craig faced the law, not my anger. Pamela started crying and Craig started yelling, shes confused, she doesnt know what she signed, and I said, I know exactly what I signed, Craig, I sorted mail for thirty-one years, I know what certified means.
I kept my yellow house on the hill. Becky is my agent now, the daughter who showed up every day, and the house will go to the one who drove over after every shift for six years, not to the son who tried to buy it from himself behind my back.
She wont remember this conversation anyway, Craig told the nurse. I remember all of it. I remember every day Becky came, and I remember signing two papers on a Thursday, and I remember what certified mail means, because I handled it for thirty-one years. Craig held an open house to sell my home to himself. He forgot his mother was the postmasters best clerk, and that I read everything before I sign it.