That sentence snagged on something. “Did he?”
She looked away.
I slid the envelope across the table and let the law firm’s letterhead face her.
Her whole expression changed.
“You recognize
it,” I said.
She said nothing.
“You knew what Daniel arranged. Didn’t you?”
Her eyes dropped to the envelope and stayed there.
That was answer enough.
Part Eleven: The Trust
I opened the envelope.
“When your brother died,” I said quietly, “he left a trust for Walter. For his schooling. His future. Everything Daniel wanted to give him and didn’t get the chance to.”
Lisa closed her eyes.
There it was. The missing piece I’d been walking past for four years.
“Daniel told you about it.”
She didn’t answer.
“Didn’t he?”
“A few weeks before he died,” she whispered.
“He never told me.”
“Apparently not.”
“And you knew that whoever was raising Walter could request money from it for his expenses.”
“With oversight,” she said, too quickly.
“And that’s why you wanted guardianship.”
“It isn’t that simple.”
“Then make it complicated. I’ll wait.”
Her face crumpled, and she started to
cry.
“I needed money, Mom.”
“For what?”
“My business was falling apart.” She wiped her face with the back of her hand. “Before Daniel died, he told me about the trust. I’d already come to you for help, and you said no.”
“So?”
Her voice broke. “So I thought the trust could save everything.”
I stared at her. At my daughter. The little girl I’d rocked through fevers, whose scraped knees I’d kissed, whose prom dress I’d hemmed by hand at two in the morning.
“And all you needed,” I said, “was Walter.”
She sobbed harder. “I was desperate! I wasn’t going to steal it!”
“Then what were you going to do?”
“Manage it.”
“For yourself.”
“I would’ve put it back!”
I laughed once, a short, ugly sound, because I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “Of course you would.”
Her head snapped up, and the tears turned to anger.
“He’s nine! What does a nine-year-old need with that kind of money? It was just sitting there!”
