The woman beside Coralie was Ingrid Marsh, an attorney who had spent years helping older clients with financial disputes. Coralie recognized her because they had met once before at my brother’s workplace. I placed Mom’s bank statement on the table beside screenshots of Coralie’s messages from seven months earlier: “I promise I’ll return every dollar once the car is fixed.” Ingrid calmly explained that those messages, combined with the $6,500 transfer, were important evidence that the money had been a loan rather than a gift.
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