My mother dried her hands on the towel and stepped closer to the screen. It was the title to the car. My name, the only name, as owner. And in the corner, the original purchase record from 1998, when my father bought it new. His signature was still on it.
My mother read it. Then she turned and looked at Glen.
She said, how did you sell a car that was never yours?
Glen said he found a buyer who did not care about paperwork. He said he sold it for cash, and a title was just a formality.
For five years my mother had been told I was ungrateful, and she found out the truth in her own kitchen, with my father looking up at her from a piece of paper.
My little brother came down the stairs and stood next to me. He did not say anything. He just stood there.
My mother asked Glen who the buyer was. He did not want to tell her. She asked again, in a voice I had not heard since before my father died. He told her.
The buyer was a mechanic named Hector who ran a shop out on the highway. My mother and I drove out there that same evening. The car was in his lot, washed and waxed. He had paid Glen three thousand dollars for it and was planning to fix it up for his daughter.
I showed him the title on my phone. I told him whose car it was. I told him my father drove it to every one of my baseball games for ten years.
Hector did not argue. He walked out to the car, opened the door, and pulled out the old keychain that was still hanging from the ignition. A little plastic fish my father won at a county fair. He handed it to me and said, this belongs to you.
He gave the car back that night. He said he would get his money back from Glen, not from me. My mother made sure he did. By the end of the week, Glen had paid Hector every dollar.
Then my mother did something else. She sat down with me and my brother at the kitchen table and went through everything. My savings account, the one Glen had talked her into making joint. My room. The things of my father that had gone missing over the years. She made a list.
She moved my savings into an account in my name only. She told Glen that anything that belonged to her children was not his to touch. She said it calmly. He did not argue.
They started seeing a counselor in January. I do not know if they will make it. That is her choice, not mine. But she told me she was sorry for not seeing it sooner, and I believe her.
I drove the car back to school after winter break. My brother rode with me for the first hour, just to say he did.
The little plastic fish is hanging from the mirror now. It swings every time I brake. My father would have laughed at that.