“My mother doesn’t take money from us.”
“At least not knowingly?”
I looked at him.
The question irritated me, not because it was unfair, but because I didn’t know the answer.
My mother lived forty minutes outside Denver in a modest townhouse she had owned for nearly twenty years. She had worked as an elementary school librarian before retiring. She clipped grocery coupons, reused wrapping paper, and complained if I spent more than thirty dollars on her birthday.
The idea that she had secretly been accepting thousands of dollars from Ethan was absurd.
“How much?” I asked.
Daniel glanced toward the spreadsheet.
“Over four years? Just under fifty-three thousand dollars.”
I actually laughed.
It wasn’t amusement.
It was the strange sound a person makes when reality becomes so ridiculous that emotion temporarily loses its direction.
“Fifty-three thousand?”
“Yes.”
“My mother would have called me if Ethan sent her fifty dollars.”
Daniel nodded.
“That’s why I think we need to be careful about assumptions.”
I looked again at the screen.
The transfers had started four years earlier.
The first one was only $300.
Then $400.
Then $650.
The amounts slowly increased.
A pattern.
I had seen patterns like this before in my work. I was a regional operations director for a healthcare logistics company, which meant I spent much of my professional life looking at numbers, schedules, staffing models, transportation routes.
I was good at noticing when something didn’t belong.
Apparently, I had simply never thought to study my own marriage with the same attention.
“What are the descriptions?” I asked.
Daniel enlarged the spreadsheet.
Some transfers were labeled medical reimbursement.
Others said property maintenance, insurance assistance, or simply family.
I shook my head.
