For the first time, I understood that Peter hadn’t been protecting Mom from a stranger.
He’d been protecting himself from the truth.
The lawyer closed the folder. “Your mother requested repayment. Whether the estate takes further action will be handled separately. The cottage gift isn’t connected to that dispute.”
Ethan pushed the box toward Collins. “I didn’t know any of this. I don’t want to be the reason they’re fighting.”
“You aren’t,” I said, though I was only beginning to understand why.
Six months earlier, Mom had called me one evening and asked whether I could come over. When I arrived, she was sitting at the dining table with a bank statement spread before her.
“Do you know what a merchant advance is?” she’d asked.
I explained what little I knew.
She pointed to a withdrawal from her savings account, then another.
“Peter says he’ll put everything back after a contract closes.”
“How much have you given him?”
She folded the statement before I could see the total.
“It’s between us. I just wanted to understand the paperwork.”
I urged her to talk to Collins. She promised she would, and I believed the matter was settled.
Now I realized how frightened she’d been.
“She knew?” I asked Peter.
He rubbed his forehead. “She found out I’d used some of the money for other things. I was going to pay her back.”
“What other things?”
“A car. Credit cards. It doesn’t matter.”
“It mattered to her.”
His voice rose. “You think I don’t know that? She made me sign that stupid paper like I was a criminal.”
Collins spoke firmly. “Your mother offered you a repayment plan rather than pursuing the matter immediately. She wanted you to have the opportunity to put it right.”
“And she gave my inheritance to him instead,” Peter said, pointing at Ethan.
“No,” I replied. “She gave you chances. There’s a difference.”
I wanted to know why Mom had never told me the rest.
Collins explained that she’d asked him to keep her financial affairs confidential while she was alive.
She hadn’t wanted a public fight with Peter, especially during her last months.
But she had also left a second letter, addressed to both of us.
I opened it with shaking hands.
“Grace and Peter, I loved you both before you could speak, and nothing you’ve done has changed that. But love doesn’t mean I must pretend everything is fine. Peter, I wanted you to stand on your own feet. I hope you still choose to do that. Grace, don’t carry the responsibility for decisions I made.”
The next lines were harder to read.
“I know you’ll wonder why I trusted Ethan. I trusted him because he never asked me for anything. When he saw I was worried about my accounts, he told me to speak to my lawyer. He didn’t ask what I owned, and he didn’t offer to handle my money. He just sat beside me until I stopped crying.”
I looked at Ethan.
He stared at the floor.
I remembered the first time I’d met him properly, not long after he began visiting.
He was kneeling on Mom’s porch, tightening a loose board with Dad’s old screwdriver.
“Mom says you won’t take money for the repairs,” I’d said.
“She feeds me dinner.”
“That isn’t the same as wages.”
He’d glanced at the door. “She talks to me like I matter.”
I’d been suspicious then.
A young stranger spending hours with an elderly widow seemed too convenient.
I even checked that Mom hadn’t given him her bank card.
He noticed.
“You’re right to look out for her,” he told me. “She’s lucky to have you.”
I hadn’t known what to say.
Once, I arrived unexpectedly and found them at the kitchen table sorting a box of Dad’s old photographs. Ethan held up a picture of Dad wearing an absurd fishing hat.
“He wore that on our first date,” Mom said, laughing. “He claimed it brought him luck.”
“Did it?” Ethan asked.
