My Sister-in-Law Told Everyone I Stole $12,000 From My Dying Mother, She Didn’t Know About the Bank Cameras

Part 4: What He Said, and What He Didn’t

Kyle showed up at my house at 6:40 on Wednesday evening, unannounced, and when I opened the door he looked like a man who hadn’t slept.

He’d lost weight in ten days. His shirt was untucked on one side.

“Can I come in.”

I stepped back and let him in.

We sat at my kitchen table, the same one we’d done homework at as kids when Mom was still married to our dad, before the divorce, before everything. Mark was upstairs. I’d told him Kyle was coming. Mark had said, “I’ll be right upstairs. Yell if you need me,” and gone up without another word, which is one of the reasons I love him.

Kyle sat across from me and put his hands on the table and looked at them.

“Frank called me,” he said.

“Okay.”

“Aunt Louise called me. Rachel called me. Sharon from church called me. Mom’s letter.” He stopped. Started again. “Mom’s letter is being passed around like a chain email, Jenny.”

“I know.”

He looked up. His eyes were red.

“Did you know she wrote that.”

“No. Not until Thursday.”

“Did you know she changed the will.”

“No.”

He put his face in his hands.

“Danielle told me you’d been taking money for months. She showed me the withdrawals. She said Mom was too sick to know what she was doing. She said we needed to protect Mom’s estate. She said.”

He stopped.

I waited.

“She said a lot of things,” he said. “And I let her say them. I stood in that parking lot and I let her say them.”

“Yes,” I said. “You did.”

He didn’t argue.

That was the first thing that got through to me. That he didn’t argue.

“I’m not going to tell you it’s okay,” I said. “Because it’s not.”

“I know.”

“Mom died thinking Danielle was watching her groceries and you were letting her. Mom drove herself to the credit union in October to protect me from your wife. She was too sick to remember what day it was and she still drove herself. She was so sure you were going to let this happen that she wrote a letter about it in case she wasn’t around when Danielle finally pulled the trigger.”

Kyle’s shoulders were shaking. He wasn’t making noise. He was just shaking.

“And she was right,” I said. “About all of it. She was right, Kyle.”

“I know.”

We sat there for a while. The refrigerator hummed. Upstairs I could hear Mark moving around, pretending he wasn’t listening.

“I filed to withdraw the estate petition this morning,” Kyle said. “Bill’s office. I told Danielle I was going and she.” He stopped. “She’s staying at her sister’s tonight.”

“Okay.”

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” he said. “I don’t know if I’m getting divorced. I don’t know if I’m supposed to be. I don’t know how much of the last two years was her and how much was me letting her.”

“That’s not my problem to solve,” I said.

He nodded. He nodded and nodded, like he was trying to convince himself he’d heard me.

“I know,” he said.

I got up and got him a glass of water because he looked like he was going to pass out, and I set it in front of him, and I sat back down.

“Kyle,” I said. “I’m going to tell you what happens now. I’m going to accept the seventy percent Mom left me. I’m not giving it back. I’m not splitting it evenly out of guilt. She wanted me to have it and she was in her right mind when she decided that and I’m going to honor what she wanted.”

“Okay.”

“And I’m not going to tell people to stop talking about what Danielle did. She said it in a parking lot in front of forty people. She doesn’t get to control the story now that it’s turned on her.”

“Okay.”

“But I’m not going to send anyone the bank footage. I’m not going to post it anywhere. I’ve made my point. I don’t need to grind her into the ground. That’s not what Mom would have wanted.”

He looked up.

“That’s more than she deserves.”

“Probably,” I said. “But it’s what I’m doing.”

He sat with that for a minute.

“Can I ask you something,” he said.

“Yeah.”

“The letter. Mom’s letter. Can I have a copy.”

I got up and went to my folder and I pulled out the last printed copy I had, and I set it in front of him.

He didn’t open it at the table.

He folded it once, and he put it inside his jacket, and he sat there with his hand pressed flat against it like he was checking to make sure it was still there.

“Thank you,” he said.

“Don’t thank me for that.”

He left around eight. He hugged me at the door, briefly, and I let him, but I didn’t hug back with my whole body. He noticed. He didn’t say anything.

I didn’t hear from him for six weeks.

—

The probate closed in February. I got what Mom wanted me to get. I paid off the roof. I paid off Mark’s truck. I put the rest in a savings account and I have not touched it, because every time I look at the number I hear my mother in the credit union parking lot saying “Count it, honey, make sure they gave us all of it,” and I can’t quite bring myself to spend the last thing she ever handed me.

Danielle moved out of Kyle’s house in March. I heard about it from Rachel. I have not asked Kyle about it and he has not told me.

He and I text now. Not often. Small things. He sent me a picture of a cardinal on his back fence in April with the message “made me think of mom.” I sent back a heart. That’s where we are.

Aunt Louise called me last week to invite me to Easter. She said Kyle was coming. She said, and I could hear her choosing the words carefully, “I think it would be good if you were both there. But if you’re not ready, that’s fine.”

I told her I’d think about it.

I haven’t decided yet.

What I’ve decided is this. I’m going to go, but I’m not going to sit next to him. I’m going to sit next to Louise. And if he wants to talk to me across the ham, he can. And if he doesn’t, that’s fine too.

I’m not in a hurry.

My mother waited eight months to spring a trap on a woman who was auditing her groceries. She drove herself to a credit union while she was dying to make sure I was protected.

I can wait a little longer to figure out what I am to my brother now.

The letter is in my glovebox. Folded, in an envelope, in the same spot where I used to keep the cash on the drive home from the bank.

I don’t know why I keep it there. I don’t read it. I just like knowing where it is.

Some mornings, when I’m sitting in my car in the driveway getting ready to go somewhere, I put my hand on the glovebox and I leave it there for a second before I start the engine.

That’s all.

Then I drive.