That was the arithmetic of it, and hearing it aloud, I understood for the first time the full and deliberate shape of what they had built.

That was not borrowing.

That was not a family helping itself to a little help.

That was two years of methodically draining an old woman’s care money into their own pockets, dollar by dollar, while she scrubbed their floors.

I will not lay out here the particular mechanics of how they moved it, the forged signatures and the rest, because the how of stealing from a vulnerable person is not knowledge worth passing on to anyone.

What matters is that it had happened, and that Arthur could prove every dollar of it, because I had kept every record of every transfer I ever sent.