My Daughter Told Everyone I Have Dementia To Steal My Fortune. Then I Found The Drugs She Was Putting In My Coffee. What Should My Next Move Be?

Early 2025 I visited Allison every month. At first, our conversations were stilted, filled with long silences and unspoken hurt. But slowly, painfully slowly, we began to find our way back to each other. In March, Jacob brought Clara to visit. She drew a picture for Allison—a family holding hands under a bright yellow sun. Allison cried when she saw it and taped it to the wall of her cell.

I wrote to Allison every week. Sometimes she wrote back, sometimes she didn’t. But I kept writing anyway. She started attending therapy sessions offered by the prison. She told me it was helping. That she was beginning to understand why she’d made the choices she had.

I set up a trust fund for Clara’s education. Jacob and I became close friends, something I never would have predicted that rainy night at the Lexington Room. Clara started calling me Grandpa Phil. It made me smile every time.

Thanksgiving 2025 Jacob, Clara, and I sat around the dining room table at my house. I’d cooked a turkey—badly—but Clara insisted it was delicious. We held hands and said grace, and for the first time in years, I felt something like wholeness.

“I raised my glass to second chances,” I said. “To the family we’re born into, and the family we choose.”

“What a family,” Jacob echoed.

Clara grinned. “Can we eat now?”

We laughed. And for a moment, everything felt right.