Ethan’s jaw tightened.
“You don’t even know what you’re looking at.”
“I’m the executor.”
That landed harder than anything on the screen.
Mom blinked.
Dad looked up sharply.
Ethan stared at me.
“What?”
I held up the attorney’s envelope.
“Grandma named me executor of her estate.”
For the first time that afternoon, nobody had a quick response.
Mom recovered first.
“That can’t be right.”
“It is.”
“She would have told me.”
“Apparently she told her attorney.”
Ethan set his glass down.
The movement was careful now.
Measured.
His confidence had not disappeared, but it had shifted into something harder.
“So what?” he said.
“That doesn’t mean every transaction involving Grandma’s money was theft.”
“No,” I agreed.
“It doesn’t.”
His shoulders loosened slightly.
Then I clicked again.
The next image showed the records the attorney had assembled during the estate review.
Money had been leaving accounts connected to Grandma’s estate over a period of months.
The same destination appeared repeatedly.
Ethan.
The room became so quiet I could hear the faint hum of the projector.
Dad spoke first.
“Why was Grandma’s money going to you?”
Ethan turned toward him.
“She helped me sometimes.”
“After she died?” I asked.
He looked back at me.
I watched him search for the next version of the story.
“I was handling things.”
“What things?”
“Expenses.”
“Which expenses?”
“Family expenses, Claire.
Things you wouldn’t know about because you’re never around.”
That almost made me smile.
I had paid Dad’s hospital bills the year before.
Nobody in that room knew exactly how many evenings I had spent at my little office job, as Mom liked to call it, calculating what I could postpone so I could help them without asking for anything back.
Ethan knew.
He had still chosen that line.
Dad knew too.
His expression changed.
“Claire paid my hospital bills,” he said quietly.
Ethan turned on him.
“That’s not what I meant.”
“No,” Dad said.
“I know what you meant.”
