He was not afraid of me finding out the truth. He could have handled me alone. He had always handled me alone.
He was afraid of everyone finding out at the same time. Because the whole machine only worked as long as he could stand between people and control what each one heard. Together, in one room, the lies could not survive. Together, everybody would just compare notes.
Which was exactly, precisely what Dad had built this whole thing to force.
I looked at Aunt Sandy. “What did he tell you? When he borrowed from you?”
“That his roof was leaking,” she said slowly, her eyes on Greg now. “That he needed to fix it before winter.”
I looked at Uncle Nolan.
“Medical bills,” Nolan said. “He told me he had medical bills he was behind on.”
I looked at Sadie, who was crying openly now.
“He said he was behind on his mortgage,” Sadie said. “That he might lose the house.”
And I stood there and I did the thing Greg had spent five years making sure I could never do. I put the stories side by side.
“Greg,” I said, “you own your house outright. And you replaced your roof two years ago. I helped you pick out the shingles.”
His jaw went tight.
“You kept me away from all of them,” I said slowly, understanding it as I said it, “because I was the one who would have noticed. I’m the one who would have compared the stories.”
“You handled all of Dad’s accounts,” Greg said, and his voice had gone cold and flat. “You always checked everything twice. You couldn’t ever just let things be.”
“So that’s what this was about? Money?”
“It started that way.”
And Dad’s voice came in over the top of him, as if the two of them were finishing each other’s sentences across the distance of death.
