Chapter 2 - THE MONEY HE CALLED CARE
Ava remained in intensive care through Christmas morning.
Doctors expected her oxygen levels to stabilize, but the cold had aggravated her heart condition. She would need several days of monitoring and a longer recovery than Dad’s word laziness had allowed.
Adult Protective Services opened an investigation because Ava was a disabled adult who depended on a family caregiver.
The police obtained an emergency protection order preventing Dad from contacting her.
I sat beside her bed while snow began collecting on the hospital parking garage.
“Why were you signing anything?” I asked.
Ava kept her eyes on the window.
“He said the bank needed updated forms.”
“What forms?”
“He told me you were trying to take the settlement.”
I stopped breathing for a second.
Dad had managed Ava’s account since Mom died seven years earlier. He was allowed to pay approved medical, housing and transportation expenses, but the money legally belonged to Ava.
I had never requested control of it.
Two weeks earlier, Ava called and asked whether she could stay with me after New Year’s. She said Dad was opening her mail and refusing to let the oxygen supplier speak with her directly.
I promised we would discuss it after the holidays.
I heard hesitation in her voice.
Then I returned to work.
“He told me you wanted the house sold,” Ava continued. “He said if I changed the beneficiary to him, he’d know I trusted him.”
“Did you?”
“No.”
That refusal began the argument.
Dad took her portable concentrator from the bedroom and carried it into the garage. He told her to follow him if she wanted it back.
Once she entered, he placed the financial forms on a workbench.
Ava refused again.
He slapped her, tore her coat while pulling her toward the chair and demanded the password to her investment account. When she would not provide it, he used the credentials saved on his tablet.
“He knew most of them already,” she said. “He watches when I type.”
“Why didn’t you call me?”
“He took my phone last week.”
I thought of the unanswered texts I had blamed on fatigue.
Ava touched the bandage at her temple.
“He said you were tired of me.”
“I never said that.”
“He said you took enough of my money to know better than to complain.”
I looked at her.
“What money?”
She turned away.
The bank’s preliminary audit gave me the answer later that afternoon.
Over five years, more than $74,000 had moved from Ava’s settlement account into expenses linked to me.
My college-loan payoff.
The down payment on my condo.
A car repair Dad covered after my transmission failed.
Every payment had been presented as a gift from him.
He had never told me the source.
May you like
Ava had seen my name in the withdrawal notes.
For years, she believed I knew.
