My Sister Uninvited Me From Our Mother’s Funeral Because I “Made Things Awkward” With the Will

Part 3: The Folder

I made him coffee first. I don’t know why. I think I needed to do something with my hands before I sat down across from him.

Doug is the middle child. He’d tell you he’s the forgotten one, but that’s not really true. Doug is the one everybody underestimates because he’s quiet, and because he stayed in Ohio while Karen ran her life like a small country and I moved to Michigan with my husband and only came home for holidays.

He teaches seventh-grade earth science. He coaches JV baseball. His wife makes casseroles for every neighbor who has surgery. He is, in every meaningful way, the best of us.

I put the folder on the table between us.

“What’s this.”

“Just read it. Start at the top. I’ll answer questions when you’re done.”

He read for a long time. He is a slow, careful reader. He kept his coffee mug in one hand and turned the pages with the other, and his face did not change until about the fourth statement, and then it did.

He set the mug down.

He kept reading.

When he got to the end, he closed the folder and put his hands flat on top of it, like he was holding it shut.

“How long have you known.”

“Almost four years.”

“Jesus, Rach.”

“I know.”

“Four years.”

“Mom made me promise.”

“That’s not, you should have, I should have known this.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

He got up and walked over to the window and stood there with his back to me for probably a full minute. Outside, my neighbor was raking leaves. Someone’s dog was barking. The world was doing its normal Tuesday thing.

“So Mom left you the house,” Doug said, still facing the window, “because Karen would have burned through it.”

“That’s what she told me.”

“And Karen knew.”

“Karen had to know. She knew Mom knew. She knew Mom was, that Mom had figured out where the money was going.”

“So when the will was read, Karen sat there and pretended it was a mystery.”

“Yes.”

“And when she walked out of Halbrook’s office screaming that Mom had picked you, she was.”

“She was performing. Yeah. I think so. Or, I don’t know. Maybe she’d convinced herself. People do that.”

Doug turned around. His eyes were wet but his voice was steady, which was somehow worse.

“And now she’s telling you not to come to the funeral because you’ll ‘make it awkward.'”

“Yeah.”

“She’s not worried about it being awkward. She’s worried you’re going to tell people.”

“Yeah.”

He sat back down at the table. He picked up the folder again and put it back down.

“What do you want to do.”

That was the question, wasn’t it. What did I want to do.

I could show up at the funeral, folder in hand, and blow Karen’s life apart in front of every relative and family friend our mother had known for fifty years. Uncle Pete would be there. Mom’s church ladies would be there. Karen’s boys, who were sixteen and nineteen now, would be there.

Or I could stay home like Karen wanted.

Or I could do something in between.

“I want to go to the funeral,” I said. “I want to sit in the front row with you and I want to say goodbye to our mother. I don’t want to blow anything up in front of her casket. I don’t want the boys to find out this way. Mom wouldn’t have wanted that either.”

“Okay.”

“But I want Karen to know I know. Before we get there. Not to threaten her. Just so she doesn’t stand next to me on Friday thinking she got away with it.”

Doug nodded slowly.

“And after Friday,” he said.

“After Friday I don’t know.”

“Rach.”

“I don’t, Doug, I don’t know. I’m not going to give her a third of the house. Mom was right about that. If I give her a third of anything she’ll set it on fire within eighteen months and be back asking for more. But I’m not going to keep all of it either. I can’t. I can’t live in this family with all of it.”

“So split it with me.”

“I was going to say split it with you.”

He almost laughed. It came out wrong, more like a cough. He rubbed his eyes with the heel of his hand.

“Mom would hate that.”

“Mom would understand it.”

“Would she.”

“I don’t know. Maybe not.”

We sat there for a while. The coffee got cold. My phone buzzed on the counter and I didn’t look at it.

Finally Doug said, “The boys.”

“Yeah.”

“They didn’t do anything wrong.”

“No.”

“Whatever Karen was spending it on, it wasn’t them. That’s what Mom said.”

“That’s what Mom said.”

“So.” He looked at me. “So maybe we set some of it aside for the boys. For college. In a trust or something. Where Karen can’t touch it. Just, in Mom’s name. Something Mom would have wanted.”

I thought about my mother in her blue cardigan with the missing button, sitting across from me at the kitchen table, telling me she was picking me because I was the only one who could hold the line.

I thought she would have liked that. The trust part. Not the rest of it. She would not have liked the rest of it at all.

“Okay,” I said.

“Okay.”

“I’m going to call Karen.”

“Do you want me on the call.”

“No. I think I need to do it alone.”

He nodded. He got up. He put on his jacket. At the door he stopped and turned around.

“Rach.”

“Yeah.”

“I’m not mad you didn’t tell me. I want to be. But I’m not. Mom put you in a bad spot and you handled it the way she asked. That’s, that’s all.”

He hugged me. He is not a hugger. It was brief and awkward and I could feel him trying not to shake, and I held on a second longer than he did.

After he left I stood in the kitchen with the folder on the table and I picked up the phone and I called my sister.

She let it ring six times before she answered.

“Rachel, I really don’t want to do this today.”

“I have the folder, Karen.”

Silence.

Long silence.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Yes you do. Mom showed it to me four years ago. Every statement. Every wire. Every check. She showed me everything. I’ve had it in my closet for four years and I never showed it to Doug and I never showed it to Rick and I never showed it to anybody. Until this morning. When you told me not to come to Mom’s funeral.”

I could hear her breathing.

“Rachel.”

“I showed Doug an hour ago.”

“You didn’t.”

“I did.”

“You had no right.”

“Karen. I had every right. You know I did.”

She started to cry. I don’t know if it was real. I couldn’t tell anymore. I used to be able to tell.

“Please don’t tell the boys,” she said. “Please, Rachel, please, whatever you do, please don’t tell the boys.”

“I’m not going to tell the boys. Doug isn’t going to tell the boys. That’s not what this call is about.”

“Then what is it about.”

I looked at the folder.

“It’s about Friday. I’m coming to Mom’s funeral. I’m sitting in the front row. I’m going to hug Aunt Linda and I’m going to shake hands with Pastor Meyer and I’m going to stand at the graveside next to you and Doug and I’m going to bury our mother. And you are going to act like a sister to me for two hours. That is the deal.”

“And after.”

“After, we’ll talk. Doug and I have thoughts. You’re not going to like all of them. But nobody is going to know about the folder except the three of us. Not the boys. Not the family. Not Rick. Not Pastor Meyer. Nobody.”

“Rachel.”

“Do we have a deal.”

“Yes.”

“Say it.”

“We have a deal.”

I hung up.

I sat at the kitchen table with my hands in my lap and I cried for the first time since Mom died. Not politely. Not in a way I would have wanted anyone to see. The ugly kind. The kind that comes up from somewhere lower than your lungs.

The pot roast smell was gone. There was no pot roast. There was no mother in a blue cardigan on the other side of the table. There was just me and a folder and a promise I had kept for four years and a sister who was going to spend the rest of her life knowing that I knew.

That was Tuesday.

Friday was coming.

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