But Douglas’s attorney was doing what Hale had predicted — making procedurally complicated what was factually simple.
Motions, delays, requests for additional verification.
Every week a new filing.
Then, ten days before the hearing, Ruth Calloway called me.
“There’s something I didn’t tell you,” she said.
“I didn’t think it was relevant.
Now I think it might be.”
“Tell me.”
“Eleanor had a storage unit.
She’s had it for thirty years.
I have the key — she gave it to me years ago and told me to give it to you if things became difficult.” A pause.
“I think things have become difficult.”
The storage unit was twenty minutes from the hospice.
A small, climate-controlled room that smelled of old paper and cedar.
Metal shelving along both walls.
Every shelf was full.
Boxes labeled by year, going back decades.
I opened the nearest one.
Letters — dozens of them — addressed to adoption agencies, to hospitals, to government offices.
