What she didn’t expect was that I would speak too.

I gathered the relatives in the courtyard — not to shame anyone, but because my mother had already spread her version.

I showed them the transfer receipts, the bank records, the medical reports, a short piece of the birthday recording.

My Aunt Louise, who’d admired my mother’s gold for years, put a hand to her mouth. “Carol — you knew that girl had cancer and still wouldn’t give her bus fare?”

My mother mumbled that Della had exaggerated.

But our neighbor, Mrs. Alvarez, spoke up firmly from the gate. “I watched that poor girl walk miles down that road in the heat because she had no bus fare. I watched her come home with her head shaved, and when I asked what happened, Tara told me it was punishment for being lazy.”