Dad pulled another set of statements from the folder.
“These are transfers out.”
Mom closed her eyes.
My $2,500 came in on the first of every month. A few days later, $1,000 went out of my parents’ account into another account.
Caleb read the account number, and his face changed. “No.”
It was his savings account, the house fund.
Leah appeared behind Mom. “What’s going on?”
Caleb held up the page. “Mom?”
Mom started crying. “Mara was doing so well. You two were trying to buy a house. I thought… I thought family money should help family.”
My stomach dropped. “Family money?”
Dad slammed his palm on the workbench so hard a box of screws jumped. “That wasn’t family money, Linda. That was Mara’s money!”
Caleb flipped through the pages, counting under his breath. There were eighteen transfers, $18,000 in all.
The money he and Leah had been so proud of saving while they lived rent-free with our parents, the fund that made them feel responsible and grown-up, had come almost entirely from me. I never knew.
I looked at Mom. “You gave them my money?”
“I was going to replace it.”
“With what?”
Her mouth opened, and nothing came out.
Caleb sat down hard on an unopened box. He looked like someone had punched him in the stomach.
“I called you a dependent,” he said. “I told you Mom and Dad were enabling you.” His voice cracked. “Mara, you were paying for our down payment?”
“Apparently.”
Leah stepped forward. “Wait. She gave the money to Linda. Linda could do whatever she wanted with it.”
Caleb turned slowly. “That’s what you have to say right now?”
Leah crossed her arms. “Mara wasn’t using it.”
I actually laughed, and everyone looked at me.
“She wasn’t using it?”
Leah flushed. “You know what I mean. You make good money.”
The garage went silent. Caleb’s head snapped toward her.
“What did you just say?”
Leah froze.
A cold feeling moved through me. “You knew?”
“I didn’t know exactly.”
“When did you find out?”
Her silence answered before she did. “A few months ago.”
“How?” Caleb demanded.
Leah looked at Mom, and Mom started crying harder. Suddenly I understood that this wasn’t one betrayal. It was a chain of them.
Mom sank into a folding chair. “Leah helped me set up online banking on my phone. She saw the deposits.”
Caleb stared at his wife. “You knew Mara was sending Mom twenty-five hundred dollars a month, and you still called her a freeloader?”
“I didn’t know it paid for everything!”
Dad laughed bitterly. “What did you think twenty-five hundred dollars a month was for? Flowers?”
Leah looked trapped. Then she made the mistake that exposed all of it.
“I thought she’d keep paying after she moved out.”
The silence was total.
Caleb’s face changed. “What?”
Leah realized too late what she’d said. “I mean…”
“You thought she’d keep paying?”
Leah backed up a step. “We weren’t throwing her out on the street. She obviously has money. And Linda said Mara always helped them, so I assumed…”
“You wanted her gone,” Caleb said slowly, “but you expected her money to stay.”
“That isn’t what I meant.”
I looked at Mom. She wouldn’t meet my eyes.
“Is that why you agreed to it, Mom?”
She started shaking her head, but Dad said quietly, “Linda.”
Something went out of her.
“We were comfortable,” she whispered. “For the first time in years, we were comfortable.”
My throat tightened. “And you thought I’d keep sending you money after you called me a freeloader in front of everybody?”
“I thought once you calmed down…”
“You thought this was a tantrum?”
“I thought family helps family.”
“Apparently only one person in this family had to follow that rule.”
Mom sobbed. I wanted to feel triumphant. Instead I felt hollow.
Then Dad said, very quietly, “There’s more.”
He pulled one last document out of the red folder. It wasn’t a bank statement. It was a monthly statement for a home equity line of credit from Heartland Savings Bank, secured by my parents’ house.
Balance: $41,870.
Caleb stared at it. “What is that?”
Dad looked at Mom, and my stomach turned before she even answered.
“The house needed repairs,” Mom whispered.
Dad shook his head. “Not forty thousand dollars’ worth. And Linda, I didn’t know this existed until last night. I was looking for the homeowner’s insurance policy for Mara’s move. I found this in the bottom of your desk.”
“You signed for it,” Mom said weakly. “Last summer.”
Dad’s face went gray. “You told me those were refinancing papers for the roof. You handed me a pen and said sign here, here, and here.”
I felt sick. My father had spent thirty years trusting his wife to handle the paperwork, and she’d used that trust to borrow against their home.
Caleb took the statement and read down the list of draws. Then he stopped and looked at Leah.
She went rigid.
There was one large withdrawal six months earlier: $24,000, wired to Clearview Title & Escrow.
Caleb’s voice was barely audible. “What is this? What title company?”
For the first time all day, Leah looked afraid.
“I can explain,” she said.
