Chapter 7 - THE PHOTOS JASON TOOK INSTEAD OF HELPING MEI was still furious with Jason.
Understanding didn't erase it.
We met at Natalie's house two weeks after the incident.
My splint had been replaced with a lighter brace.
I could move more easily.
Jason sat at the kitchen table.
“I need you to tell me exactly why you photographed the table.”
He looked sick.
“Dad said you were getting unstable.”
“What?”
“He'd been saying it for days.”
That sounded familiar.
Not dementia this time.
Hormones.
Pregnancy.
Pain medication.
Apparently women who ask about missing money become medically inconvenient.
“He told me if you accused him of mistreating you, we needed proof the party was normal.”
I stared.
“So you photographed a clean table.”
“Yes.”
“While he hit me.”
“I froze.”
I said nothing.
Jason continued.
“When he told me to take pictures, I thought he meant after.”
“But you started immediately.”
“I always do what he says immediately.”
That sentence came from a twenty-seven-year-old man with a beard and callused hands.
He heard it too.
His eyes filled.
“I hate that.”
“Then change it.”
He nodded.
The photographs eventually became useful.
Not because they proved innocence.
Because cameras often capture things the person taking them doesn't notice.
One image showed Dad leaning over me.
His hand blurred near my splint.
Mom holding the cloth.
Background guests turning away.
Another caught Brenda—Dad's cousin—standing in the dining-room doorway looking horrified.
She later became an independent witness.
The clean-table photo also captured the edge of a cardboard box near the hallway.
Label visible:
2011–2018 PRE-NEED.
Dad had moved records from the funeral home into the private residence before the party.
Why?
He said he planned to review them at home.
Possible.
But the same box disappeared after the incident.
Police didn't find it.
Jason did.
In the hearse.
Behind the casket.
Dad had used the vehicle to move records.
Again.
Jason turned the box over voluntarily.
That decision cost him whatever relationship he still had with Dad.
Dad sent one email afterward:
You are no son of mine.
Jason printed it.
Then deleted the original from his phone.
“Why print it?”
“I don't know.”
“Maybe because you're a Carter.”
He laughed.
We were a document family now.
Jason found work at another funeral home in Cranberry Township.
He started as operations coordinator.
Less money than Dad had promised he'd eventually earn.
More than Dad had actually paid him.
The first paycheck made him angry.
“I wasted nine years.”
“No.”
He looked at me.
“You learned a business.”
“And learned to obey.”
“Both.”
He started therapy.
I did too.
Mark and I went together once because I had become jumpy whenever he reached toward my injured leg.
My body didn't care that Mark was safe.
Trauma is annoyingly inefficient.
The baby remained healthy.
At thirty-three weeks, she kicked hard enough to move the blanket over my stomach.
Jason put his hand there once.
Then pulled it away.
“Sorry.”
“You can touch.”
He smiled.
Then cried.
Everything made us cry that month.
Meanwhile, Samuel's audit widened.
Not because of my assault.
Because the bank and state-required trust administrators needed clarity.
The missing records helped.
So did the storage boxes.
What emerged was not a single $384,000 theft.
It was a history of improper timing, undocumented intercompany advances, later repayments, renewed withdrawals, and personal/business lines blurred across seventeen years.
Some money had been restored.
Some hadn't.
Some expenditures may have benefited the funeral business.
Others clearly did not.
The Florida property became difficult to justify.
A vehicle purchased through Carter Memorial Holdings but used primarily by Mom became another issue.
Not every questionable transaction was criminal.
Every one required explanation.
Then Samuel discovered something that moved the investigation back another generation.
Grandpa Carter's trust shortfall had not started with the chapel renovation.
It started one year earlier.
And the first withdrawal was tied to my father's college tuition debt.
May you like
Dad had spent his life claiming he sacrificed everything to repair Grandpa's mistakes.
Part of the original mistake had been made for him.
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