PART 3: LILY’S ACCOUNT
Rebecca’s hands shook while she entered the password.
She got it wrong twice.
Daniel stood beside her.
I stayed on the other side of the island.
The kitchen suddenly seemed too bright.
Every surface reflected light.
There was nowhere for anything ugly to hide.
When the account dashboard finally appeared, Rebecca tried to tilt the phone toward herself.
Daniel took it.
“Ethan first.”
He opened the account.
We had already seen the balance on my statement.
But seeing it live made the loss feel different.
This wasn’t an old document.
This was now.
Daniel scrolled through the transaction history.
His face hardened with every movement of his thumb.
Some entries matched mine.
Others did not.
The records I had received were incomplete.
There were more.
Far more.
Not all of them were obviously personal.
Some were transfers into another account.
Some were payments with generic processing labels.
But the dates were enough.
Daniel began opening transaction details.
A transfer went into the household checking account.
Two days later, a payment went to Maison Interiors.
Another transfer.
Then the resort.
Another.
Then a card payment made during the renovation.
Rebecca sat perfectly still.
Daniel looked at her.
“You moved it through checking.”
“I told you it was complicated.”
“No. You made it complicated.”
He scrolled farther.
“You moved the kids’ money into our checking account and then spent it.”
“I didn’t want it to look—”
She stopped.
Daniel’s eyes lifted.
“You didn’t want it to look like what?”
Rebecca covered her face.
None of us finished the sentence.
He returned to the screen.
Then he switched accounts.
Lily’s.
I will never forget the sound Daniel made.
Not a word.
Just air leaving his body.
“No.”
Rebecca began crying again.
I stepped closer.
Lily’s account had been touched too.
Not once.
Not by mistake.
Repeatedly.
The withdrawals had started later than Ethan’s, but they followed the same pattern.
Transfers.
Household account.
Expenses.
There was more money left in Lily’s than in Ethan’s.
But far less than there should have been.
I gripped the back of a chair.
“Robert…”
His name escaped before I could stop it.
Rebecca looked at me.
And perhaps for the first time that afternoon, she understood that this wasn’t only about dollars.
She had spent something belonging to a dead man’s promise.
Years earlier, Robert had made our first deposit for Lily while she was still in the hospital.
She had been born slightly early.
Tiny.
Red-faced.
Furious at the world.
Robert stood beside her bassinet and slipped the deposit receipt into Daniel’s hand.
“She’ll be running the place one day,” he said.
Daniel laughed.
“What place?”
“Whatever place she wants.”
That was Robert.
He believed children should have choices.
Not guarantees.
Choices.
Education money was never about creating spoiled grandchildren.
It was about giving them the ability to choose school based on what they wanted to learn instead of what debt they were willing to carry.
Daniel looked at the phone.
Then at Rebecca.
“How much total?”
She whispered, “I don’t know.”
He slammed his palm against the island.
“Stop saying that!”
