And she planned for everything, because life had taught her that no one was coming to catch her if she fell.
Two years before she d*ed, she sat me down at that same kitchen table and told me she’d set up a trust.
“If anything ever happens to me,” she said, “the house and my life insurance go into a trust for the girls. You’ll be the guardian and the trustee. But the money is theirs. Locked. Not even you can spend it on anything but them.”
I’d half-listened at the time, the way you do when you’re twenty-three and your mother is healthy and talking about paperwork.
“Why so complicated, Mom?” I’d asked.
She had looked at me with an expression I only understood much later.
“Because people change when there’s money and no one watching,” she said. “I want my girls protected from everyone. Even the people who say they love them.”
