“Then tell me.”
She looked at the counters.
Her voice became smaller.
“Things got expensive.”
Daniel almost laughed.
Not because anything was funny.
Because the answer was absurd.
“Things?”
“The house. The kids. Travel. Everything.”
“So you took from their accounts?”
“I moved money.”
“That means nothing.”
“I intended to replace it.”
“When?”
Rebecca did not answer.
Daniel walked around the island.
“How much did you move?”
“I don’t know exactly.”
“You manage every bill in this house down to the dollar, and now you don’t know?”
“I’d have to check.”
“Then check.”
She wiped beneath one eye.
“I need time.”
I understood immediately.
“No.”
Both of them looked at me.
My voice was steady now.
“You have had time.”
Rebecca stared at me.
“Three weeks ago, when I called asking about Ethan’s account, did the institution notify you?”
Her face answered before she did.
Daniel saw it.
“They called you?”
Rebecca looked down.
“They sent an alert.”
“And you didn’t tell me?”
“I knew what your mother was doing.”
“I was trying to find out whether my grandson could pay tuition.”
Daniel stared at his wife.
“So for three weeks, you knew Mom had noticed.”
Rebecca said nothing.
My stomach tightened.
That explained something that had bothered me.
Two weeks earlier, Rebecca had unexpectedly called and spent almost twenty minutes telling me how difficult college costs had become.
“Kids take loans now,” she said.
“It builds responsibility.”
She even joked that Ethan might appreciate school more if he had “some skin in the game.”
At the time, I thought she was preparing me emotionally for higher tuition.
Now I realized she had been preparing a story.
“You were trying to convince me loans were normal,” I said.
Her expression hardened.
“They are normal.”
“They were never supposed to be necessary.”
Daniel took out his phone.
“What institution?”
I gave him the name.
Rebecca’s head snapped up.
“What are you doing?”
“Calling.”
“You can’t just—”
“Yes, I can call and ask what I’m entitled to know as their father.”
“You’re going to embarrass us.”
That sentence made Daniel stop.
Slowly, he lowered the phone.
“Embarrass us?”
He looked around.
“Our son may not be able to afford the colleges he’s been working toward because money was taken from his account.”
His voice cracked.
“And you’re worried about embarrassment?”
Rebecca finally sat down.
Her shoulders dropped.
For a moment, I saw something other than anger.
Exhaustion.
Fear.
Maybe even shame.
“I borrowed some,” she whispered.
Daniel closed his eyes.
There it was.
The first admission.
“How much?”
“I don’t know.”
“For what?”
“Things we needed.”
I looked at the pendant lights above us.
“Did Ethan need those?”
Rebecca’s face tightened.
“That’s cruel.”
“No. Cruel is making him think his grandfather’s promise still existed.”
Daniel rubbed both hands over his face.
“When did it start?”
Rebecca didn’t answer.
I reached into my purse again.
This time, I removed the older records.
I had marked dates.
“I think I know.”
Rebecca looked up sharply.
The first questionable withdrawal had appeared almost three years earlier.
It was small compared with the others.
A transfer.
No obvious merchant.
Several months later, another.
Then another.
At first, I had nearly ignored them.
But after comparing dates with what I remembered happening in the family, a pattern emerged.
The larger withdrawals became more frequent during the year of the renovation.
