Chapter 5 - WHAT MY MOTHER GAVE HIM
Mom had met the man six months before Dad died.
Not romantically at first, she insisted.
A widower in Colorado Springs who commented on a grief-support group.
Dad had been sick. Mom was lonely. The stranger was patient.
Then came an investment opportunity.
Then another.
By the time she realized the account statements were fake, she had transferred nearly $46,000 from savings Dad thought would carry her through retirement.
She told no one.
Except Dean.
“Why him?”
“Because he didn’t judge me.”
I almost laughed.
Dean judged everyone.
But he understood shame better than anyone I knew, and shame was useful.
Mom said Dean offered a solution.
A short-term loan.
He said our home had enough equity, I had good credit, and he could arrange everything digitally. Mom claimed he told her I had agreed but didn’t want Nate to know because Nate would panic about her finances.
“What did you give Dean?”
She stared at the table.
“Your father’s estate folder.”
My Social Security number had been in it.
Copies of my driver’s license.
Old tax returns.
My childhood address.
My mother’s maiden name.
Every answer a lender might use to verify identity.
“You gave him my identity.”
“I thought he had your permission.”
“Did you ever ask me?”
“No.”
“Did you ever thank me for supposedly putting my house up for you?”
Her mouth opened.
Closed.
That was the answer.
Mom received $28,000.
Dean told her fees had reduced the original draw.
There were no fees anywhere near fourteen thousand dollars.
She had been repaying him $500 a month in cash because he claimed the loan could not accept partial electronic payments.
Cash.
No paper trail.
I leaned back.
My mother had not merely known something.
She had participated in the silence that made everything possible.
Maybe innocently at first.
Not later.
“You knew I didn’t know.”
Tears filled her eyes.
“I started to suspect.”
“When?”
She could not look at me.
“Last Christmas.”
Eight months ago.
I stood.
“Rachel, please.”
“You watched me host Christmas dinner in the house you knew Dean had borrowed against.”
“I was scared.”
“So was I last night.”
That ended the argument.
At the door, Mom said, “There’s something else.”
I stopped.
She swallowed.
“Dean told me the extra money was for his business.”
“How much extra?”
“I don’t know.”
“You never asked?”
“He said if the business failed, Nate would lose his job.”
There it was.
Dean had not just found my mother’s shame.
He had wrapped my brother’s livelihood around it.
May you like
But one question remained.
If Dean’s business trouble came later, why had he taken the missing fourteen thousand dollars during the very first draw?
