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I jumped off the tailgate and headed down the driveway. “Is that information in what you emailed me?” I kept my voice low as if my family inside the house could hear me all the way out here.
“Thought that would interest you,” he said.
“You’ve seen all the accounts?”
“What did you think? I’d only be able to look at one?” That defensive edge was back. The chip on my brother’s shoulder never went away. He’d had huge disappointments in his life, and I understood he felt he had something to prove, but damn it, I wasn’t always insinuating he didn’t know his ass from a hole in the ground.
“I meant have you looked at all the data?” I attempted to keep my voice even, squelching the rising irritation.
“Nothing appears atypical as far as I can see. Like I said, you’re the money man, but I wrote some diagnostic code to check and didn’t come up with anything.”
“So why the urgency? From what you’re telling me, we definitely didn’t have to sell.” I turned and looked back at the house in the distance. It had always represented trust, the one place in the world where I didn’t have to worry about the issues on the outside. Had I been disillusioned, only seeing what I wanted to see?
“I can’t find anything that indicates we had to either.” He let out a long breath. “I did stumble across something else though,” he said hesitantly.
“What?”
“Mom and Dad’s personal bank account looks low.”
I stared back at the old yellow farmhouse. “I didn’t ask you to look at that,” I said quietly, avoiding the sinking feeling settling in my stomach.
“I wouldn’t have, but there was a file called Bank and I thought it related to Carter Energy.”
“How low are we talking?”
“Five grand is all that’s left.”
I plowed a hand through my hair. My parents had the best health insurance money could buy, though I wasn’t sure at what price the privilege came. I did know there were expenses for my mother’s treatments above and beyond what was covered. I also knew my father would go broke to save her life with zero regrets just as Drew and I would.
“Is that account number in what you emailed me too?”
“No. Once I realized it was a personal account, I just took a quick look and closed the document.”
“Maybe he’s moved the money around. He’s never discussed the particulars, but they have several accounts,” I reasoned. Over the years, Dad had tried to talk to me about what they had where in case anything happened to them. I’d always brushed him off. Their assets weren’t my business, and beyond that, I didn’t like thinking about either of them not being around.
“This looks like their main account they pay expenses from. Earlier in the year, there was several hundred thousand in there.”
“I thought you just took a quick look,” I accused. A prickly feeling came over me about sneaking around behind their backs. This was crossing a line I wasn’t prepared to traverse. But if my parents were in trouble . . .
“There are a lot of cash withdrawals in varying amounts. The account was drained over the span of a few months.”
I hoped like hell this was the final bombshell Drew had to drop in this conversation. “I’ve got to talk to Dad, tell him I’m ready to go over their personal assets like he’s been trying to get me to do.”
“He’s been wanting to show you what they have?” There was a note of anger in his voice.
“Just in case anything happened so we wouldn’t be scrambling trying to figure things out.”
“How long’s he been wanting to do that?” The anger ramped up another notch.
“I don’t know. A few years? I’ve put him off every time.”
“Shouldn’t that be something we all looked at together?”
“If you’d have been up for taking care of it yourself that would’ve been fine by me. I—I just wasn’t ready to think about them not being around. I’m still not,” I confessed.
“Neither am I,” Drew said quietly.
A few leaves swirled in the otherwise calm as a heaviness settled between us. We were losing our mother and there wasn’t a damn thing we could do about it. I hadn’t been oblivious, but when faced with it, I struggled.
