Mr. Whitfield spread the deeds across the dining table like a card dealer laying out a winning hand. Three houses. The Charleston beach house Gregory and Patricia bragged about on Facebook. The suburban home where my other son Damon lived. And the very house Gregory had raised his children in, the one he had just, in effect, told me I was no longer welcome to visit. All three sat in my name, held quietly in a trust my late husband and I had built over decades, and not one of them had ever asked whose name was on the paper. They had simply assumed the money appeared because they deserved it.

“So what would you like to do?” Mr. Whitfield asked, uncapping his pen. I looked at the forty-two missed calls glowing on my phone, then at the screenshot of my son’s message erasing twenty-seven years of my life. “Gregory has a mortgage arrangement with me,” I said slowly. “Below market, no due date, because he’s my son. Damon too.” Mr. Whitfield nodded. “And now?” I thought of every graduation I learned about online, every photo I was cropped out of. “Now,” I said, “I’d like to understand my options. All of them.”