You only need to say one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“Whatever you actually feel,” she said.
“Not what you think Tom would want.
Not what’s strategically correct.
What you feel.
That’s the only thing that will land with him.”
I looked at the withdrawal records still spread across the table.
Forty-one rows.
Twenty-six months.
My husband, already sick, choosing not to spend his remaining energy on a fight with his brother.
“He protected him,” I said.
“Even then.”
“Yes,” Diane said quietly.
“He did.”
“I don’t know if I can do the same.”
“You don’t have to decide that now,” she said.
“You just have to be in the room.”
At two o’clock, a car pulled up outside.
I watched from the kitchen window as Daniel got out.
He was wearing a jacket, which meant he’d thought about how he looked.
He stood beside his car for a moment, looking at the house, and I saw something move across his face — not guilt exactly, but the shadow of it.
Daniel looked older than he had at the funeral.
That was my first thought — that grief had done something to him too, or maybe it was the weight of what he’d done, which is a different kind of grief entirely.
“Claire,” he said.
“Come in,” I said.
He followed me to the kitchen.
When he saw Diane sitting at the table, he stopped in the doorway.
“You said this was a family conversation.”
“It is,” I said.
“Sit down, Daniel.”
He sat.
He put his hands on the table and then moved them to his lap.
He looked at the documents still spread between us and looked away.
“I want to explain,” he said.
“Go ahead,” I said.
He talked for almost ten minutes.
I didn’t interrupt, the way Diane had told me not to.
He talked about a period three years ago when his business had nearly failed.
About a loan he couldn’t get approved.
About Tom, who he’d called and who had said *use the account, just for now, pay it back when you can.* About how he’d meant to.
About how the business had stabilized but there were other pressures, other months, and he kept thinking he’d have more time.
When he finished, the kitchen was quiet.
Diane spoke first.
“The account records don’t show any authorization from Tom,” she said.
“There’s no written agreement, no documented conversation.
What we have is forty-one withdrawals and two partial repayments.”
“Tom wouldn’t have written it down,” Daniel said.
“That’s not how we did things.”
“I understand that’s your position,” Diane said.
“But in the absence of documentation, what you’re describing is an unauthorized use of a jointly held account.
That’s the legal reality, regardless of the personal history.”
Daniel looked at me.
Not at Diane.
At me.
“Claire.
You know Tom.
You know he would have helped me.
He did help me.”
“I know he confronted you fourteen months ago,” I said.
“And I know you promised to pay it back and didn’t.”
His jaw tightened.
“He was sick.
I didn’t want to add pressure—”
“He was sick,” I said.
“And he spent some of his remaining energy worrying about this instead of just being with us.
Because you made a promise you didn’t keep.”
Daniel looked at the table.
“What do you want from me?” he said.
For the second time.
But it sounded different now — smaller.
Diane opened the leather folder and placed a single sheet in front of him.
“A repayment agreement,” she said.
“Thirty-four thousand dollars over twenty-four months.
The first payment due thirty days from today.
