My brother changed the locks on Mom’s house before we even got back from the cemetery. “Mom’s house, my rules,” he told thirty relatives standing on her front lawn with casseroles. I said, “Okay, then I’ll let the executor know.”
A new brass deadbolt was on the front door, still wearing the little sticker from Lowe’s. Blaine had the only key. My aunt Carol took hold of my arm and whispered, “Honey, what is going on?”
“I don’t know yet,” I said. “But I’m going to.”
My niece Macy, who was seventeen, stood just behind Blaine on the porch. She looked like she wanted to disappear. Some of our relatives were still holding foil pans. Nobody seemed to know whether to set them down or take them back to their cars.
“Blaine, people brought food,” I said.
“Then eat it on the lawn.”
“It’s Mom’s house.”
“I live here,” he said. “Nobody goes in without me.”
I didn’t argue with him there. I said the line about the executor, walked to my car, and called the bank. The thirty relatives on the lawn didn’t know what I meant. They were looking at the lock.
I’m Christina, but Blaine’s two children, Macy and Colt, have called me Aunt Chrissy since they were born. I was fifty-one and managed a dental office in Shreveport. I wasn’t someone who usually made a scene. I was the one who brought the paper plates.
Blaine was my baby brother. He was forty-four, divorced, and the father of Macy and Colt. He had always loved the casino boats across the river in Bossier. After his divorce, he promised Mom he had quit for good.
When Mom got sick two years ago, Blaine moved back in with her. He said he would take care of her so I wouldn’t have to drive over every night after work.
“You work, Chrissy,” he told me. “I’ve got Mom. Let me do something right for once.”
I was grateful enough to cry. I believed him. I also knew Mom’s care was a lot to take on, and I couldn’t be there every evening. Blaine was there, and he made it sound as if I could stop worrying.
That spring, Mom gave him power of attorney. She named me executor of her will. I didn’t think much of the difference at the time. Mr. Fontenot, her lawyer, handed me the paperwork at Mom’s kitchen table.
“She wanted somebody organized,” he said. “Her words.”
I took that as a practical choice. I wasn’t looking for a fight or a special role in the family. Mom had chosen Blaine to help her while she was alive and me to handle the will after she was gone. I thought we could manage both things without turning them against each other.
Mom died on a Tuesday. The funeral was Saturday. Blaine rode with me in the family car to the cemetery and cried the whole way. At the graveside, while the preacher was saying the last prayer, he slipped away early.
I thought he needed air. I did not know he was going to get a locksmith.
By the time Aunt Carol and I arrived at Mom’s house, Blaine was on the porch with the new key. I could see the lock from the lawn. I could see Macy behind him, watching us. I did not know what had happened inside or why he had decided nobody else could come in.
“I live here,” he said again. “Nobody goes in without me.”
“You can’t just decide that,” I said.
“Mom’s house, my rules.”
That was when I told him I would let the executor know. I was so hurt I could barely feel my feet on the grass. The title of executor had sounded like paperwork when Mr. Fontenot gave it to me. Standing outside my mother’s house, it was the only authority I knew I had, and I wasn’t even sure how much it could do.
I had learned why the bank account worried me two days earlier. Mr. Fontenot had told me that I would need to notify Mom’s bank of her death, so I went to the branch on Youree Drive with a copy of the death certificate.
The woman at the desk checked the account. Then she stopped and looked at me carefully.
“Ma’am, I can’t go through the history with you until the court makes it official,” she said. “But I can tell you the balance.”
“How much?”
“Two hundred and twelve dollars.”
I had helped Mom count $86,000 in that account for her taxes in January. I felt sick standing at the desk. I asked whether someone was still using her debit card.
The woman looked at her screen again. “There’s been activity this week,” she said. “After the date of death.”
I knew Blaine had told me Mom’s money went to her home nurse and her medicine. He had said it more than once, and I had accepted it. But Medicare paid for the nurse. I checked that for myself. I didn’t know what had happened to the money, and I didn’t want to accuse him without knowing. I did know that the balance and the explanation did not fit.
“Can you stop the card?” I asked.
She said the bank could freeze the account when the paperwork cleared. On Thursday, I asked them to do that. Saturday morning, while Blaine was putting on his suit, I called to make sure it had happened.
Then, on Mom’s lawn, his phone buzzed inside his suit pocket.
He looked at it. His face changed as he read the message. I watched him go pale. He came down off the porch and took me by the elbow, steering me toward the carport and away from the others.
“What did you do?” he said through his teeth.
“My job,” I said. “Mom gave it to me.”
“You better fix it.”
“I can’t fix what the bank has already done.”
“Then call them. You have to call them.”
“I called them before we got here.”
He looked toward the lawn. “Macy and Colt will never speak to you again. I’ll make sure of it.”
That hit me harder than I wanted it to. I had taken those kids to every Christmas play and every orthodontist appointment. Macy called me before she called her own mother. I loved them like my own, and Blaine knew it.
I stood there with my heels sinking in the grass. I thought about Macy behind him on the porch. I thought about the $86,000 I had helped Mom count. I pictured Mom at her kitchen table, licking her thumb as she counted the bills.
“I’m not fixing anything,” I said. “Open the door, Blaine.”
He stared at me, then looked toward the house. The blinds were closed tight in the front window. They had never been closed in my whole life. Mom liked the light.
“You don’t want to go in there, Chrissy,” he said. His voice cracked. “Trust me.”
“Why not?”
He wiped his face with his hand. He looked about ten years old. Behind us, Aunt Carol was passing out deviled eggs on paper napkins like it was a church picnic.
“Chrissy, I changed the locks because I didn’t want anybody to see…”
He stopped. For a few seconds, neither of us spoke. I wanted him to finish, and I was afraid of what he would say. The relatives were close enough to see us but not close enough to hear. Macy was still on the porch.
“See what?” I asked.
“I used the card,” he said.
“You used Mom’s card?”
He nodded.
“After she died?”
“Some of it was before. Some was after. I don’t know how much.”
The number at the bank was still sitting between us. I asked him whether the money had all gone to Mom’s care.
“No,” he said.
I waited.
“I used some for myself,” he said. “I kept thinking I’d put it back.”
“How much?”
“I don’t know.”
He didn’t say where the money had gone. He didn’t explain the difference between what had been in the account in January and what remained. I couldn’t tell from what he said how much of the balance had been spent on Mom or when. I could only hear the part he admitted: some of it had been for him.
“You told me her money was for the nurse and medicine,” I said.
“I know.”
“Medicare paid for the nurse.”
“I know, Chrissy.”
He said it so quietly I almost didn’t hear him. Then he looked past me toward the relatives and the food they had brought. “I didn’t want everybody coming in and asking.”
“You changed the locks instead.”
“I didn’t know what else to do.”
The answer didn’t make what he had done smaller. It did tell me why he had been standing on the porch with a new key, ordering his family to eat outside while Mom was barely buried. He had wanted to keep us out before anyone could ask what was happening with the account.
I could have told the people on the lawn what he said. I could have made him repeat it in front of everyone. I didn’t. Macy was watching, and I wasn’t going to make her stand in the middle of a public argument about her father and her grandmother’s money.
“Open the door,” I said again.
Blaine looked at Macy. She didn’t move. Then he took the key from his pocket and unlocked the deadbolt.
I went inside with him. Aunt Carol stayed close, and the others began carrying the food in once the entrance was open. I didn’t see a reason to inspect the house in front of everyone, and no one needed to crowd around us. The important thing was that Blaine had stopped keeping the family out.
I asked him for the debit card.
He hesitated, then took it out and handed it to me.
“You can’t keep using it,” I said.
“I know.”
“I’m handling the estate. The bank has to deal with the account, and I have to do my job.”
“I said I know.”
I was angry. I was also still his sister. Those two things sat beside each other, and I couldn’t make either one disappear because the day was already hard.
I told him I wasn’t going to pretend the money didn’t matter. I also told him I wasn’t going to decide, on the lawn, what he owed or what had happened to every dollar. The bank had the account history. I would deal with what I was allowed to handle as executor and speak with Mr. Fontenot about the next steps. I had no answer for the missing money yet.
Blaine didn’t argue about the lock again. He didn’t explain the total, and I didn’t claim to know it. His admission was enough to change what I had to do; it was not enough to tell me exactly where the money had gone.
Macy stayed near the doorway. I went over to her.
“You okay?” I asked.
She nodded, but she looked down.
“You don’t have to take sides in this.”
“I know,” she said.
I wished I could promise that nothing between us would change. I couldn’t promise that. I could tell her I loved her, and I did.
The relatives brought the food into the house. Aunt Carol kept moving, passing out plates and making room for people, as if giving everyone something ordinary to do would help. No one made a speech. No one asked Blaine to explain himself in front of the family.
I still don’t know where all of Mom’s money went. Blaine said he had used some of it for himself, but he couldn’t tell me how much. I was left with the account to handle and a brother who had used the children he loved to try to stop me from doing it.
The lock was no longer between us. The money was still a question. I kept the card from being used again, and I took responsibility for the work Mom had named me to do.