She wasn’t going to hand me my mother’s bank statements. That wasn’t how it worked.
What happened instead was more prosaic and took about three weeks. Patricia identified several transfers from Ruth’s accounts over the years and, as part of the estate process, sent itemized account summaries to both beneficiaries. This was standard — both Daniel and I were entitled to understand what the estate contained and what had left it during my mother’s lifetime.
The summary came in a dense three-page document. Most of it was what I expected: mortgage (paid off eleven years ago), utility payments, grocery and household charges, medical costs, the pension and Social Security deposits.
But there were also eight separate bank-to-bank transfers over a seven-year period. They were labeled in the summary with my brother’s name — the records used his full name, Daniel S. Bennett — and a total across all of them of $48,000.
I read the summary twice. I set it down. I picked it up again.
$48,000.
I thought about the year the roof needed replacing, the year Daniel said he didn’t have the cash, the year I wrote two checks to the roofing company from my savings. According to the dates in the summary, there had been a $15,000 transfer to Daniel in March of that same year. Five months before the roof was done.
I sat at the kitchen table for a long time.
I didn’t feel angry, exactly. That would come later. Right now I felt something more like vertigo, the sensation of a landscape you thought was level showing itself to have been tilted the whole time.