I shoved the bank statements back into the box right as my brother walked through the front door. He looked completely normal — keys in one hand, coffee in the other — while my heart was practically trying to punch through my ribs.
“Hey,” he said casually. “You guys found anything worth keeping?”
I just stared at him.
Then I held up one of the statements.
His face changed instantly.
Not guilty at first. More like… cornered.
“For thirty years?” I asked. “Mom was sending you money for thirty years?”
He dropped his keys on the counter and sat down hard like his legs gave out.
Turns out my brother had been drowning in gambling debt since he was nineteen. Mom kept bailing him out over and over, terrified nobody would speak to him again if the truth came out. Every time he promised it was the last time. Every single time.
“What happened to all the money after she got sick?” I asked.
He looked away and said quietly,
“She stopped sending it.”
That’s when I realized something worse.
The last withdrawals on the account weren’t made by Mom.
They were made after she was already unconscious in the hospital.
