My Granddaughter Whispered That Her Parents Were About To Steal My Fortune At My Birthday Party

"Dad, please," Chandler whispered, his voice cracking. "It wasn't... we didn't mean to hurt you. We just... we have some debts. Melody's business... and the mortgage on our house..."

"You have debts," I said, looking at my son, the boy I had taught to fish, the boy whose college tuition I had paid in full so he wouldn't have to carry the burden of loans. "So you decided to pay them by stealing the roof over your mother's and my head?"

"We weren't going to kick you out!" Melody yelled. "We were just going to use the equity. You don't need all this space anyway. We were going to help you transition to a nice facility next year. We already looked at places."

"A facility," Joanne said, stepping forward. Her voice was trembling, not with fear, but with a mother's broken heart. "You were going to put us in a home so you could sell our life's work to pay for your lifestyle, Melody?"

"It's not just that, Mom," Rachel said, her eyes still on the papers. She had picked up the folder again and was reading through the attached financial disclosures. "They didn't just want the house. Look at this schedule of assets."

Rachel slid the paper across the table to me.

It was a list of my bank accounts, my retirement accounts, and the small investment portfolio I had set up for Iris's college fund.

But there was something else.

Attached to the back was a forged signature page.

It was a copy of my signature from a Christmas card I had sent them last year, scanned and pasted onto a document authorizing the liquidation of my retirement accounts into a joint account under Chandler's name.

"They weren't planning to wait for you to sign this today, Dad," Rachel said, her voice thick with emotion. "They had already started the process. They just needed the signed deed to complete the package for the bank. If you had signed that deed today, they would have emptied your accounts by Monday morning."

I looked at Chandler.

"Is this true?" I asked.

My son couldn't look at me. He covered his face with his hands and began to sob, his shoulders shaking.

"I'm sorry, Dad. I'm so sorry. Melody said... she said you'd never know. She said the bank would handle it quietly and we'd pay it back before you ever needed it."

"Pay it back?" I said, the word bitter in my mouth. "With what, Chandler? You don't have a plan. You've never had a plan that didn't involve someone else paying the price for your mistakes."

Melody grabbed Chandler's arm, pulling him toward the door.

"Come on, Chandler. We're leaving. They want to be self-righteous? Fine. Let them live in this drafty old house until they rot. Let's see how much they love their money when they're eighty and can't climb the stairs."

"Get out," I said.