The brother shook his head.
“Don’t sanitize it.”
“I’m telling her.”
“Then tell her.”
My father looked up.
“We argued.”
“About what?”
He glanced at his brother.
The brother answered.
“Money.”
My stepmother said quietly, “A lot of money.”
My father looked at her.
“You stay out of this.”
She shrugged.
“You should have told her before I had the chance.”
I turned back to the brother.
“What money?”
He sat across from me.
When he leaned forward, I saw that his hands were shaking.
“Our father left us a small contracting company.”
I looked at my father.
I knew the business.
Or at least I knew what it had become.
My father now owned a successful regional construction firm.
I had grown up hearing that he had built it from almost nothing after my mother died.
Apparently “almost nothing” had included a brother nobody mentioned.
“We owned it together,” the brother continued. “Fifty-fifty.”
My father said, “On paper.”
“Here we go.”
“You stopped showing up.”
“I was twenty-three.”
“You were stealing.”
My eyes shifted toward the brother.
He gave a slow nod.
“Yes.”
The admission surprised everyone.
“I was stealing.”
“How much?”
“More than I could repay.”
“What does that have to do with Mom?”
The brother looked toward my father.
“She found out.”
My throat tightened.
“How?”
“Your mother handled some bookkeeping.”
I knew that.
I had seen photographs of her at the original office, sitting behind an ugly gray desk with a calculator.
“She noticed invoices that didn’t make sense,” he continued. “Checks written to companies that didn’t exist. Equipment purchases that never arrived.”
“You stole from Dad?”
“From both of them.”
My father rubbed his temples.
“She wanted me to report him.”
“You should have,” I said.
“Yes.”
The answer came immediately.
No defense.
No excuse.
“I should have.”
His brother looked at me.
“That night your mother told me she had copies.”
“Copies of what?”
“Everything.”
“She was going to the police?”
“Yes.”
My father interrupted.
“She wanted to talk to a lawyer first.”
“Same difference.”
“No, it wasn’t.”
The brother smiled without humor.
“Twelve years and you’re still correcting details.”
“Because details matter.”
“Details didn’t save her.”
My father stood so quickly the chair scraped backward.
“Stop.”
His brother stood too.
I stepped between them.
“Both of you stop.”
They did.
That surprised me.
I pointed toward the brother.
“You were driving.”
He nodded.
“Why?”
Silence.
“Why were you driving if everyone was angry with you?”