My daughter stood invisible among twenty-three celebrating relatives, clutching her red velvet dress while the space beneath the Christmas tree remained completely empty for her.
“Sorry.”
“I’m not.”
Daniel’s hands tightened slightly around the wheel.
Emily looked toward him.
“Dad?”
“Yeah?”
“Did Grandma really take almost forty-eight thousand dollars?”
“Yes.”
“And you knew before today?”
Daniel hesitated.
“I knew enough.”
“How long?”
“About six weeks.”
Emily stared at the back of his seat.
“You believed me?”
That question hurt more than anything Patricia had said.
Daniel looked at her through the rearview mirror.
“From the minute you told me.”
Emily blinked.
“Then why didn’t you say anything?”
“Because believing something and proving it are different.”
He explained that the account had originally been created under a family investment structure when Emily was young.
Years earlier, Patricia had received temporary administrative access while Daniel recovered from emergency surgery and I cared for both him and six-year-old Emily.
We forgot about the authorization.
Patricia didn’t.
At first, the withdrawals were small.
Eight hundred dollars.
Twelve hundred.
Then two thousand.
As Carter Residential became more profitable and Daniel continued paying many of Patricia’s regular expenses, nobody examined the old account closely.
The withdrawals grew.
According to the accountant, some money went toward Mark’s debts, some toward Rachel’s renovation, and several thousand toward Patricia’s own credit cards.
“Did Uncle Mark know where it came from?” Emily asked.
“We don’t know,” Daniel said.
“Rachel?”
“We don’t know that either.”
Emily looked out the window.
“I almost apologized.”
