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A laugh escaped me before I could stop it.

Paul had known enough to be ashamed. He’d waited too long and let everyone else’s plans carry us farther than they should have. But today, when no one was watching, he’d gone to my father and made certain his own father couldn’t touch my money.

I pulled out a chair and sat.

“It’s my money,” I said.

Neither of them answered.

I looked from one to the other. “There’s something else I don’t understand.”

My father waited.

“How did I not know?”

My mother’s fingers tightened around her martini glass.

“I mean really know. Suppose you didn’t tell me before the wedding. Fine. Awful, but fine. What would happen afterward? How could I go through my whole life thinking my parents had simply given us money when there were millions of dollars that were mine?” I took a breath. “How much?”

“That was never the intention.” He looked toward the windows. “Thirteen million.”

My mouth dropped open. I knew we were well off, but not rich.

My mother started to speak, but I raised a hand.

“Please. I still want to know what would have happened after the wedding.”

My father rubbed his thumb along the condensation on his glass.

“After you married, distributions from the trust would have gone into investment accounts. We planned to give you money over the years. A house. Money for investments. Accounts for the children. College funds.”

I vaguely remembered those things. Money from my parents. A cushion that had always existed somewhere beneath our lives.

“Paul would handle everything,” I said.

My father nodded.

Investments. Taxes. Insurance. Retirement. College accounts. The thick envelopes that arrived full of tiny numbers I had no interest in deciphering. Paul put yellow tabs beside the places I needed to sign, and I signed.

I leaned back and stared across the wet lawn. I’d always known we had money. I knew my parents had helped us and that Paul was good at investing it. Somewhere along the way, comfortable had become very comfortable. I’d never known millions had belonged to me before I ever became Lorrie Ellsworth, but Paul had.

For all those years Paul had handled the finances because he was good at it, and I had let him because it was easy. I trusted him, signed what he put in front of me and went back to dinner, school schedules, children, my parents, and the hundred other things that filled our days.

My father cleared his throat bringing me back to the present. “The trust will be explained to you properly now. Every provision, every account, every restriction.”

“If it takes all day,” my mother added.

He looked at her. “That was going to be my line.”

“She’ll stop listening after three hours.”

“I’m sitting right here.”

“I know your limitations.”

Despite everything, I smiled.

“I do want to know all of it,” I said. “No more conversations around me. I know I haven’t used my college degree and I work at a record store, but I’ve never been frivolous with money.”