“What am I supposed to tell Steven?”
That question told me where his mind still was.
Not with me.
Not with what he had done.
With the promise he had made to his brother.
“Tell him the truth.”
“Which is?”
“You promised him money that wasn’t yours.”
His phone buzzed on the table.
He looked at the screen and didn’t answer.
I didn’t need to ask who it was.
A moment later it buzzed again.
Eleanor picked it up and pushed it toward him.
“Answer your brother.”
Mark didn’t move.
For the first time that morning, the confidence had left both of them.
The money had never been theirs.
But the promise was.
Eventually Mark picked up the phone and walked toward the kitchen.
I could hear only his side of the conversation.
“Steven, listen.”
A pause.
“No.”
Another pause.
“I know what I said.”
His voice dropped.
“It isn’t happening.”
Eleanor flinched as though I had personally taken something from her.
I realized then that she had already spent the inheritance emotionally.
Maybe not on herself, but in her mind the crisis had been solved.
Steven would be rescued.
Mark would be the good brother.
Eleanor would be the mother who saved her youngest son.
And I would play the role they had assigned me: the grieving wife with more money than she supposedly needed.
No one had bothered to ask whether I agreed to the script.
Mark returned several minutes later.
“He’s furious.”
“With you?”
He didn’t answer.
“He thought the money was guaranteed, didn’t he?”
Mark sat down again.
“I told him the sale was almost done.”
Eleanor interrupted.
“You can still fix this.”
Mark looked at me.
I saw the question on his face before he asked it.
“Would you at least consider giving him enough to settle the urgent debts? Not all of it.
Just enough to buy time.”
Under different circumstances, perhaps that question could have been discussed.
If he had come to me weeks earlier.
If he had told me the truth.
If Steven had asked for help himself.
If Eleanor had not entered my home demanding my mother’s money as though collecting a debt.
But those circumstances no longer existed.
“No.”
Mark’s face hardened again.
