attention of the journalists gathered to report on the big fire.
And since Tina hadn't started the phone call with "How could you!" he figured that the rescued campers were keeping their promise not to tell the truth about how they'd gotten across the lake.
"How are you doing?" she asked, sounding anxious. "You didn't get hurt, did you? I worry about you every time you parachute out of one of those planes."
"I'm fine," he assured her. "But I'm really worried about Abuelita Delfina. I just talked to her, and she didn't sound like herself at all. She told me that you and Aarón were holding her captive and forcing her take pills—"
"Oh, no!" Tina interrupted him, sounding exasperated. "Not that again!" She sighed heavily. "Steve, I haven't wanted to tell you, but our abuelita hasn't been herself lately."
"Did anything happen?" Steve demanded.
"Remember that accident she had back in June, when she fell and hit her head?" Tina asked.
"Yeah. But I thought everything checked out after her CT scan," Steve replied, worried now. "Her doctor told us that Abuelita was expected to make a full recovery."
"That's what we were hoping too," Tina said. "But since then, we've all noticed a cognitive decline. Her short-term memory is failing, and she's gotten weirdly paranoid and combative."
"Oh, no." A chill tightened Steve's back muscles. This sounded bad.
"She thinks the family is conspiring against her. Aarón's been doing his best to help, but she seems to have fixated on the idea that he—and me, too," Tina sounded hurt, "are trying to harm her."
"Tina, are you sure Aarón isn't up to something?" Steve demanded. "You know our abuelita. She's never been the type to tell wild stories."
Tina sighed again. "The last time I spoke with her doctor, she told us that Abuelita may have suffered a mini-stroke just before she fell and that there might be some brain damage that didn't show up on the scan. It's very difficult to see her like this." She paused and added, "If you were here, you'd understand."
Ouch. Steve felt the twist of that knife all the way to his core.
"We've been trying to do our best for her, but she’s fighting us and won't let us help her," Tina continued. "Aarón's been forced to file a Petition for Conservatorship, because she can't even remember to take her pills, much less continue to run our company." She sighed. "Dementia is such a horrible tragedy, especially for someone like our abuelita. It's so sad it's come to this, but trust me, it’s for her own good.”
Deeply troubled, Steve listened to his sister describe the steps that his brother was taking to secure legal guardianship over his grandmother.
After they ended the call, he sat in the courtyard for a long time, lunch forgotten. He felt shaken to the core by the revelations handed to him by his grandmother and then his sister.
It sounded awful but all too plausible. And Tina wouldn't be helping Aarón unless she genuinely believed that their abuelita could no longer manage her affairs or live on her own.
Aarón's petition to have their grandmother declared incompetent and to gain guardianship over her sounded reasonable, except for one huge thing. If Abuelita Delfina was put under a conservatorship, then Aarón would gain full control of the family corporation.
Power and money. The two things he loves the most.
Steve decided there and then that despite Tina's reassurances, he needed to hire a lawyer to represent his abuelita's interests and to make sure that nothing hinky was going on.
There was just one obstacle standing in his way. Money. If he wanted to help his grandmother, he would need to pay for all of her legal expenses up front.
Sure, his family was rich, but Steve wasn't. After graduating from university, he'd turned down the job that Papá had offered him at the Vicario-Lopez Development Corporation and had become a wildland firefighter with the National Forest Service instead.
Tina had been really mad at him for that. She had ranted that she couldn't understand why he'd want to sabotage his career prospects like that, and give up the chance to earn real money.
Steve had worked his ass off to become as a smokejumper, and he loved it. Money had never mattered to him…until now. But as his parents and abuelita had pointed out so many times, a government employee's salary didn't begin to compare to the salary he could be raking in if he worked for the family company.