I stood in the break room holding my phone, my heart pounding.
The worst part was that she wasn’t entirely wrong. Pam was the one who lived close. For four years she’d been the one driving Mom to appointments, picking up her prescriptions at the drugstore in Harvey, sitting with her through the long first winter after Dad died. Rob, Dean, and I sent our money and made our Monday phone calls and came home for holidays. Pam did the rest.
But none of that meant Mom should freeze.
We didn’t speak for eleven weeks.
The following Tuesday, I took another personal day and drove Mom to Mr. Ostrander’s office in Harvey.
Mr. Ostrander has been our family’s lawyer for thirty years. He’s in his seventies now, a thin, stooped man with a white mustache and a cardigan with leather elbow patches. His office is above the hardware store on Main Street, up a narrow flight of creaky stairs.
He listened to everything. The propane, the coat, the frost on the windows. Then I showed him the bank statements.
He studied the four checks for a long time.
“Arlene,” he said gently, “these are your checks. Your handwriting. Did anyone pressure you to write them?”
“No,” Mom said firmly. “Pam never asked me for a dime. I offered. Mark can’t work, and I wanted to help.”
“That’s your right. It’s your money, and you can give it to whoever you choose.” He took off his reading glasses. “But I’ll tell you what worries me. You gave away five thousand six hundred dollars, and then you sat in a cold house because you thought you couldn’t afford to heat it. That tells me nobody was looking at the whole picture. Not you, not Pam, not anybody.”
