Mateo read the second notice I had kept in my Bible, the one stapled behind the title, and his jaw went tight right there at the welcome-home ceremony. Krystal had used the power of attorney one more time, on something with Sofias name on it.
He had already confronted her about the truck. The power of attorney his JAG office drew up before he deployed was a special one, he explained, holding it out. It covered his bills, his housing allowance, and his mail. Thats it. Not his truck. Not his house. Krystal sold Big Lou, his blue 2019 Silverado named after his grandpa, for nineteen thousand dollars, using a document that never gave her the right. Under Texas law an agent who goes past what the power of attorney allows is personally on the hook, and misusing a soldiers power of attorney brings in the JAG.
Then I gave him the second notice, and it was worse than the truck.
Krystal had used that same power of attorney to empty the military college savings account the grandparents started for six-year-old Sofia, and she had done it to give the money to her boyfriend.
Sofias account. The one Ruben and I opened the day she was born, and that Mateos own parents and Krystals mother had all paid into, a little every birthday, for a little girl who calls me Abuela. Krystal had signed as attorney-in-fact and drained it, the same week she moved a man named Jace into my sons house and put him in my sons Army T-shirts.
I am Glenda. I am sixty-three, and I drove a school bus in Killeen for twenty-six years. My son is Staff Sergeant Mateo Reyes, First Cavalry Division, fifteen years in the Army. He bought that truck when he made sergeant and he used to pick me up in it every Sunday for church.
When a man called my house in June asking if the Silverado came with the extra key, I drove to my sons house and found a white Charger in the driveway and a stranger in Mateos T-shirt, and Krystal behind him saying its my marriage, Glenda, stay out of it. My husband Ruben said the same, its not our business, let Mateo handle it when hes home.
I did not call my son in Poland. I was not going to put that in his head while he had a job to do over there. But I kept every notice that came to my house, the title transfer and the second one I did not understand, and I put them in my Bible and I prayed.
A power of attorney is a narrow key, not a master key. The JAG writes them tight on purpose, precisely so a soldier overseas cannot come home to find his whole life signed away. Krystal used a key meant for the light bill to sell a truck and empty a childs savings, and that is not a gray area in Texas, that is exceeding authority and misusing a legal instrument, with a childs name making it uglier still.
I needed the money, she said, you dont know what its like here. Mateo looked at her a long time and said, Jace doesnt need my T-shirts, Krystal. She went white, because she did not know Id told him. I had not. Sofia had, on a video call in July, a six-year-old telling her Abuela who was sleeping in Daddys room.
Mateo handled it the Army way, through JAG and through the civilian courts both. The truck sale, made with a document that did not permit it, was challenged and the buyer protected. Krystal was held personally liable for the nineteen thousand. And Sofias college account, drained to fund a boyfriend, was the thing that turned a divorce into a matter the court took very seriously, because you can wrong a soldier, but when you reach into his childs savings the law stops being polite.
Sofia is safe. That was the only thing that ever mattered to me. Her account will be made whole, her father is home, and the custody arrangement the court set keeps her with the parent who did not treat her future like a checking account.
Stay out of it, Krystal told me, its my marriage. I stayed out of the marriage. I did not stay out of a childs savings account or a soldiers truck, because those were not hers to sign away, and the Army sends my son a copy of everything. Big Lou is a long story still being sorted. Sofia calling me Abuela on Sundays is not. That part came home safe, in uniform, and picked me up for church.