“I lent him five thousand dollars two years ago because he told me Dad was short on taxes,” Raymond muttered to me in a low voice.

“I believed him.”

I smoothed my skirt down over my knee, feeling my lip sting where Julian’s knuckle had caught me at the church.

Dad hadn’t lost his mind in that hospital room.

He hadn’t forgotten who I was or mislaid his checkbook out of old age.

He had stayed awake through those long autumn nights in this very chair, writing down every transaction, saving every receipt, and hiding the proof right where Julian would have to look at it.

“We are going to review every single document in these six blue folders,” Samuel said to the relatives standing in the doorway.