“What question?”
“Whether I authorized you.”
His chair scraped backward.
Several people at nearby tables turned.
Mom immediately reached for him.
“Mike, sit down.”
He did, but his face had changed color.
“You need to fix that,” he said.
“I told the truth.”
“You don’t understand what you’re doing.”
“That’s what you said about my money.”
His jaw tightened.
“I was trying to make you richer.”
“You were trying to make yourself richer with money you stole.”
Dad finally spoke.
“Mike, where exactly did the money go?”
My brother turned toward him, betrayed by the question.
“I told you.
Properties.”
“Which properties?”
Mike’s expression hardened.
“Why are you suddenly interrogating me too?”
Dad did not answer immediately.
Because suddenly the conversation was no longer about whether I was too conservative with my own savings.
It was about whether Mike had any control over what he claimed to have purchased.
Uncle Paul pushed the receipt closer to himself.
“Does this show the property company?”
Mike snatched it away.
“Stop.”
That was the first moment I saw panic.
Small, but unmistakable.
Jennifer saw it too.
“Mike,” she said carefully, “are the properties actually under contract?”
“Yes.”
“Under whose name?”
He looked at her as though she had joined the enemy.
“The company.”
“What company?”
“Why does everyone suddenly care about details?”
I folded my arms.
“Because details are what you left behind.”
His eyes snapped back to me.
The room around us seemed louder now.
I could hear the low murmur of conversations from other tables, the hiss from the open kitchen, the delicate clink of ice shifting in water glasses.
Mike lowered his voice.
“You’re enjoying this.”
“No.”
“You’ve always wanted me to fail.”
“No.”
“You sit there with your spreadsheets and your accounts and your boring little rules, waiting for everyone else to make a mistake.”
I held his gaze.
“You transferred $2,287,543.18 from my account.”
He flinched when I said the exact amount.
“That isn’t a mistake.”
Mom began crying quietly.
For most of my life, that sound had been enough to make all of us change direction.
