I called Sherry from the parking lot.
She answered on the second ring, bright and busy, with the television going behind her.
“Hey, Teresa! Did you get the tax stuff dropped off?”
“I did,” I said. “Daddy wants to see you tomorrow at ten. He asked for both of us.”
There was a long silence. I could hear her breathing.
“Is he all right?”
“He’s fine. He wants to talk to us.”
“About what?”
I thought about what to say. In the end, I only said one thing.
“I took him out to the farm today, Sherry. We saw Bobby.”
The silence went on so long I thought the call had dropped. I looked at my phone screen to check.
Then she said, “Ten.” In a small voice I hadn’t heard her use since we were girls sharing a bedroom.
And she hung up.
I didn’t sleep much that night. Doug didn’t either. Around two in the morning, I heard him get up and go into the kitchen, and when I came out, he was sitting at the table with my IRA statements spread out in front of him and his reading glasses on.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Figuring,” he said.
He’d added up every withdrawal. Thirty-six of them. Plus the taxes we’d paid on those withdrawals, because the government counts IRA money as income when you take it out. Another $9,400 over three years that I hadn’t even thought about.
“Eighty-five thousand dollars, near enough,” Doug said quietly. “All told.”
I sat down across from him.
“You know what I keep thinking about?” I said. “Not the money. Sherry braided my hair every single morning before the school bus. Every morning, Doug. For years. She walked me to my classroom on the first day of school every year until I was in the fourth grade and told her to quit embarrassing me.”
Doug reached across the table and put his hand over mine.
“People do things,” he said. “Good people do bad things when they’re scared. Doesn’t make the money come back. Doesn’t make her not your sister either.”
Lila Hart is a dedicated Digital Archivist and Research Specialist with a keen eye for preserving and curating meaningful content. At TheArchivists, she specializes in organizing and managing digital archives, ensuring that valuable stories and historical moments are accessible for generations to come.
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