Dad slammed his palm against the table.
“My father was eighty-six. He clearly wasn’t thinking straight.”
“Your father spent months preparing this,” the lawyer replied. “I helped him review the financial records.”
He explained the rules. Each person would draw a card showing a transaction, explain what they knew about it, and then hear Grandpa’s findings.
“This is ridiculous.”
The will reading would follow once everyone completed the game.
“This is ridiculous,” Mom muttered.
I stared at the board.
“Why didn’t Grandpa just tell me?”
“He wanted everyone to hear the same truth, together,” the lawyer answered. “So nobody could convince you afterward that you’d misunderstood.”
I stared at the board.
A terrible uneasiness settled over me.
The lawyer picked up the first card.
“Aunt Carol,” he said, “we’ll begin with you.”
Aunt Carol reluctantly picked up her card. On the front was a photograph of her remodeled kitchen, with a date from fifteen years ago printed underneath.
$45,000.
Carol stared at him.
“What’s my kitchen got to do with anything?” she asked with a nervous laugh.
“Do you remember where the money came from?” the lawyer asked.
“Of course. My sister gave us a loan when Frank and I were struggling.”
The lawyer pulled a bank statement from a folder.
“That money came directly from the account holding your niece’s settlement.”
“Do you remember?”
Carol stared at him.
“What? Your mother told me it was money she’d inherited!”
Mom immediately leaned forward.
“Those were perfectly normal family arrangements. There’s nothing wrong with helping relatives.”
“With whose money?” I asked.
Brian frowned.
She looked away.
The lawyer turned to Brian.
His card showed him smiling in his graduation gown.
$68,000 — TUITION AND LIVING EXPENSES.
Brian frowned.
She looked away.
“Uncle helped with college. I thought he was just being generous.”
I remembered working evening shifts at a grocery store because my parents insisted they couldn’t afford my tuition.
“You went to college with my money while I was taking out loans?”
Brian’s face went pale. “I swear, I didn’t know.”
Uncle Frank grabbed his card next.
“That was a loan!”
$90,000 — BUSINESS INVESTMENT.
“That was a loan!” he protested. “I even paid some of it back!”
“You did,” the lawyer confirmed. “But those repayments went into your brother-in-law’s personal account, not the settlement fund.”
Frank slowly turned toward Dad.
“What the hell did you do?”
My hands were shaking now.
Dad crossed his arms.
I looked between my parents. “How much of my settlement did you give away?”
Dad crossed his arms. “You’re all taking this completely out of context.”
How deep did this go?
The lawyer placed the card in front of Dad.
It showed the house we’d moved into when I was ten, a beautiful four-bedroom home with a big backyard. Dad had always told me he’d worked himself nearly to death to afford it.
How deep did this go?
Underneath the photograph were the words:
$420,000 — HOUSE PURCHASE AND RENOVATIONS.
“What does this mean?”
The lawyer opened another folder.
“A substantial portion of the down payment came from your settlement account. So did the money for the renovations three years later.”
I stared at the papers.
“That’s impossible,” I whispered.
“There’s more.”
He laid out several bank statements, pointing to transfers that eventually led to two vehicles, family vacations, investments, and credit card payments.
“Your father moved the money through different accounts. Your mother authorized many of the withdrawals.”
I stared at the papers.
“We took care of you!”
When I was twelve, Mom had told me we couldn’t afford to replace my worn-out rehabilitation equipment. A year later, Dad complained that another round of treatment was draining our finances.
That same year, they’d remodeled our kitchen and bought a new SUV.
Mom started crying. “We were your parents! We took care of you!”
“With my money?”
“That’s not fair!”
“We deserved something!”
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