My Sister Handed Me a Folder at Our Mother’s Funeral, And Told Me Not to Open It Until Everyone Left

Part 2: The Yellow Paper

Katie, I need you to forgive your sister before you read the rest of this.

I read the line four times. Our mother’s handwriting was worse than I remembered. Some of the letters didn’t close. The y’s dropped off the page. But it was her. The way she made her K’s, all elbows.

*I told Emily to do it. She fought me for two years. She said it wasn’t fair to you and Doug and I told her fair is a word people use when they don’t want to make a hard choice.*

*You know your brother. You know what would have happened if Doug had known there was money to move. He would have moved it into something with his name on it and told me it was for tax reasons. He’s my son and I love him but I raised him and I know him.*

*You would have said no because you would have thought it was a trick. You would have called Emily and said Mom is being manipulated and Emily would have had to explain and it would have poisoned everything.*

*So I asked Emily to do it quietly. The transfers were mine. I told her which accounts. I told her when. She kept the records because I made her, in case one of you ever needed to see them. That is why she gave you the folder.*

*The money went where I wanted it to go. Emily will tell you. Please let her tell you.*

*I am sorry I made her carry this by herself. She is the strongest of my three children and I used that. Mothers do that. I hope one day you will understand.*

*I love you, Katie. I loved you all the same but not in the same ways.*

*Mom*

I sat on the twin bed for a long time. The house had gone quiet. Doug must have left. I could hear water running downstairs, one of the pipes in Emily’s kitchen that had knocked since we were in high school.

I don’t know how long I stayed up there. Long enough that the light in the window went from gray to black. Long enough that my legs went stiff.

When I finally came down, Emily was at the kitchen table with two glasses of wine already poured. She’d changed out of her funeral dress into a sweatshirt that said BALDWIN HIGH VOLLEYBALL. It had a hole in the sleeve.

“He’s gone,” she said. “Hotel.”

I sat down. I put the folder on the table between us like it was a piece of evidence. My hands were still shaking a little.

“Where did the money go, Em.”

She took a sip of wine. She didn’t answer right away.

“You want the short version or the long one.”

“I want the true one.”

She almost smiled at that. It was the closest thing to a smile she’d had on her face all day.

“There’s a woman in Toledo,” she said. “Her name is Rebecca. She’s forty-one.”

The kitchen went very small. I could hear the refrigerator humming.

“Mom’s?”

“No.”

Emily looked at me over the rim of her wine glass.

“Dad’s.”

Our father died when I was nineteen. Heart attack, in the garage, on a Saturday. I found him. That is a whole other story that I don’t tell people at parties.

“Dad had a daughter.”

“Dad had a daughter before he met Mom. In college. He didn’t know until Rebecca was fourteen. Her mother wrote to him. Mom found the letter.”

“Mom knew.”

“Mom knew for thirty years, Kate.”

I picked up the wine glass. I put it down without drinking. I picked it up again.

“Why didn’t she tell us.”

“Because Dad asked her not to. And then Dad died. And then it was just her, alone with it, and she said the longer she waited the worse it got. She said by the time you were thirty she couldn’t figure out how to say it without it sounding like she’d been lying to you your whole life.”

“She had been lying to us our whole lives.”

“I know.”

Emily set the wine down and put both her hands flat on the table.

“Rebecca has a son. He’s fourteen. He’s autistic, nonverbal. Her husband left when the kid was three. She works nights at a hospital. Mom found her four years ago, after her diagnosis. Drove to Toledo by herself, Kate. I didn’t know until she came back and told me. She said she couldn’t die without meeting her.”

“And the money.”

“Mom set up a trust for the boy. For therapy, for school, for when Rebecca can’t work anymore. The transfers you saw, that’s what those were. Every couple months, a chunk. Mom did the math on what she thought she could afford to move without leaving Doug room to sue.”

I thought about that. Doug. Suing. Not a hypothetical.

“She could have just put it in the will.”

“Kate. Think about who our brother is.”

I did think about it. I thought about Doug at the fireplace with his beer, telling the funny story. I thought about Doug on the phone at the cemetery. I thought about Doug when we were kids, the way he used to count the presents under the tree to make sure his pile was equal.

“He would have contested it.”

“He would have burned the house down.”

We sat there for a while. Somewhere in the house a clock ticked. I could hear a dog barking two yards over.

“Why me,” I said finally. “Why give me the folder. Why not just let it be a secret.”

Emily looked at her hands.

“Because Mom told me to tell you before the will reading. She was very specific. She said if I told Doug he’d try to unwind it. She said if I told nobody, I’d carry it alone for the rest of my life, and she didn’t want that for me.”

Her voice cracked a little on that last part. Just a little.

“She said you’d understand.”

I picked up the wine and this time I actually drank it. All of it.

“When is Monday’s meeting again.”

“Ten.”

“What does the will say.”

“House to me. Investments split three ways. Doug gets Dad’s coin collection and the truck. There’s nothing in there about Rebecca. That’s the point.”

“He’s going to see the account balance is lower than he expects.”

“Yes.”

“He’s going to ask questions.”

“Yes.”

I looked at my sister. My sister who had bathed our mother and given her morphine and buried our mother’s secret for four years without telling a single person. My sister in the volleyball sweatshirt with the hole in the sleeve.

“What do you need me to do.”

She let out a breath she must have been holding since October.

“I need you,” she said, “to sit next to me on Monday. That’s all. Just sit next to me.”