Chapter 3 - Cancún Was Never the Destination
Daniel recovered quickly.
He always did.
“Mom, listen to me.”
“No.”
“This is exactly why I filed the petition.”
My fingers tightened around the phone.
“Because I objected to being abandoned without mobility equipment?”
“Because you overreact.”
Margaret quietly activated the recorder on her own phone.
Daniel continued.
“You’ve been unstable since Dad died.”
There it was.
The sentence he wanted other people to believe.
“You sold my wheelchair.”
“I was going to replace it.”
“When?”
“When we got back.”
“With what?”
He hesitated.
“A better one.”
“The chair cost twenty-two thousand dollars.”
“It was old.”
“It was eighteen months old.”
Another pause.
Then Kendra’s voice sounded in the background.
“Ask her about the hotel reservation.”
Daniel covered the phone badly.
“I’m handling it.”
I looked at Margaret.
She wrote one sentence on her legal pad.
KEEP HIM TALKING.
“Where are you?” I asked.
“At the airport.”
“Cancún?”
“Yes.”
“Which airport?”
Daniel swore.
Then the line went quiet.
Something had shifted.
Margaret noticed it too.
“Daniel?”
“Mom, restore the cards.”
“No.”
“We’re stranded.”
“You sold the equipment I need to move so you could afford a resort.”
“It wasn’t like that.”
“That is precisely what it was like.”
Kendra grabbed the phone.
“Evelyn, this is ridiculous.”
I almost admired her confidence.
“You are punishing both of us because you’re angry.”
“I don’t believe I gave you permission to use my accounts.”
“You gave Daniel permission.”
“Not anymore.”
Her voice hardened.
“You can’t just cut people off.”
I looked at Margaret.
She raised one eyebrow.
I nearly smiled.
Apparently, according to Kendra, selling a disabled woman’s wheelchair was acceptable.
Canceling a beach vacation was cruelty.
Daniel seized the phone again.
“Enough.”
His tone had changed.
No longer irritated.
Afraid.
“Mom, whatever Margaret told you, she doesn’t know everything.”
“What doesn’t she know?”
“You need me.”
“I need a wheelchair.”
“You need someone in that house.”
“I had someone in that house.”
His breathing sharpened.
“Do not let Margaret move you anywhere.”
That caught my attention.
“Why?”
“Just don’t.”
“Why, Daniel?”
The call disconnected.
Margaret and I stared at each other.
Five minutes later, her investigator called.
Cancún had never been Daniel’s final destination.
The resort reservation was real.
But only for two nights.
On the third day, Daniel and Kendra had tickets from Mexico to Panama.
One-way tickets.
Margaret placed the investigator on speaker.
“There’s more.”
A wire transfer request had been scheduled for the morning after their departure.
The amount was $480,000.
The recipient account was registered in Panama.
My stomach dropped.
“From which account?”
“The household capital account.”
“That requires two authorizations.”
“It does.”
“Daniel only had one.”
The investigator was silent.
Then he said, “Someone provided the second.”
Margaret and I looked at each other.
Only four people had secondary authorization authority.
Margaret.
Me.
The trust’s chief financial officer.
And my younger brother, Robert.
Thomas had insisted Robert be included because he was family.
I had trusted him for forty-six years.
Margaret lowered her voice.
“Evelyn, the second authorization was entered under Robert’s credentials.”
I felt the room tilt.
May you like
Daniel had not been acting alone.
And suddenly, the guardianship petition made terrible sense.
