“Witnessed, notarized, and filed with the state, Alice,” Walsh said, tapping a thick manila folder on his desk. “Your father underwent thorough psychiatric evaluations on the days he signed these. He was of perfectly sound mind. There is no legal avenue for your mother or sister to contest this. You own the company.”
I felt a dizzying rush of vertigo. “So, what happens now?”
“Now,” Walsh said, leaning forward, “we wait for the other shoe to drop.”
It didn’t take long. A week later, a clerical error at the insurance brokerage sent an automated update letter to my parents’ estate. My mother opened it. She learned, in cold, impersonal corporate font, that she was no longer the beneficiary of the $2.3 million policy.
Panic, I later learned, set into the Jordan household like a virus.
Two days after that, Natalie, sensing a shift in the wind, utilized her executive clearance to illegally snoop through the company’s digitized shareholder registry. She found the update filed on September 25th. The 51% transfer.
