No shared password.
No transfer instruction waiting for his approval.
And most importantly, I had never authorized a single dollar for Steven.
Mark lowered the pages.
“So you hid the money from me.”
I stared at him.
“I protected my mother’s estate.”
“From your husband?”
“From anyone who thought they could spend it without asking me.”
Eleanor laughed sharply.
“Oh, please.
Stop making this sound sinister.
Steven is in trouble.
We are trying to save him.”
“With whose money?”
“Family money.”
“Whose name is on those accounts?”
She didn’t answer.
Mark did.
“Emily, you’re missing the point.”
“Then explain it.”
He stood and began pacing beside the dining table.
“Steven owes people.
Serious people.
He has loans.
He has other debts.
He needs a way out.
I told him we finally had one.”
“You told him that before speaking to me.”
“I knew you’d understand.”
“No.
You assumed I’d obey.”
He stopped pacing.
“That’s not fair.”
The words almost amazed me.
Not fair.
I had spent six months dismantling the home where my mother had lived for decades.
I had found old grocery lists in her handwriting.
Birthday cards she had saved from when I was a child.
Receipts from nights when she had worked overtime because there wasn’t enough money for everything we needed.
I had sat alone on the floor of her bedroom deciding which pieces of her life could fit into boxes and which I would have to leave behind.
Mark had visited once.
He stayed less than an hour because he had somewhere else to be.
Steven never came.
Eleanor called twice during those months.
Both times, she asked about the sale price.
I hadn’t understood what that meant until now.
“When did you promise him?” I asked.
Mark looked toward his mother.
That glance told me everything before he spoke.
“A few weeks ago.”
“Before the apartment closed.”
He nodded.
“And you knew exactly how much you were promising.”
“We knew the expected sale price.”
We.
