“He asked me to help with the paperwork. That’s all it was.”

That’s what Wayne said. Word for word. And I remember standing in my kitchen holding the phone so hard my hand was cramping, just trying to figure out if I was misunderstanding something.

Because Wayne has always been the type to have an explanation. A smooth one. The kind that almost makes sense if you don’t look too closely.

I should back up a little. The county recorder’s office sent a notice. A duplicate deed notice. Which, honestly, I didn’t even know was a thing they sent. I almost threw it away thinking it was junk mail because the envelope looked so plain. But something made me open it, and I stood at my kitchen counter reading it three times before anything actually registered. My dad’s farm. Eighty-six acres out on Route 9 that he has worked since before I was born. The land that still has the fence post he and my uncle put in together in 1987, the one that leans a little to the left and he always said he’d fix and never did. That land had been transferred. To Wayne. Last month.

Dad is 83. He was diagnosed with early-stage dementia about two years ago, but honestly it moved faster than the doctors expected. Some mornings he calls me by my mom’s name. She’s been gone for eleven years. He forgets what season it is sometimes. He’ll ask me the same question four times in an hour and not realize he asked it at all. He’s not completely gone, I want to be clear about that. He has good days. But he is not a man who should be signing legal documents without someone sitting next to him explaining every single line. Everyone in the family knows that. Wayne knows that.

So when I called Wayne and he told me Dad had asked him to help with the property taxes, I asked him to explain that to me more. He said there was some kind of paperwork Dad wanted sorted out and that he had just driven out there and helped him get it done. He said it like he was describing helping someone carry groceries. Casual. A little bored even. I asked him what specific paperwork, and he said something about tax filings, transfer documents, the usual stuff. I said, “Wayne, I pulled the deed. It’s not a tax form.” He got quiet for a second and then said Dad had wanted to make sure things were “taken care of” before anything happened to him. That was the phrase he used. Taken care of.