He looked out at the driveway before he looked at me. I told him the bank had mentioned a cash deposit made in June using the secondary card. He asked how much, and I told him it was exactly the amount that had been in the envelope from my safe. He said he didn’t know anything about it, but I could hear his voice changing. Then I asked why the deposit had been made under someone else’s name. He stopped drinking his coffee.
After a long silence, he admitted he’d taken the money, but said he hadn’t spent it. He had used it to pay a debt that wasn’t his. A few months earlier, he’d discovered that his father had secretly borrowed money from an old business partner before he died. The man had threatened to take the house if the debt wasn’t settled. My son had been making payments himself, but eventually ran out of money. He took the cash because he was terrified that telling me would make me lose the house.
Then he went inside and came back with a folder he’d kept hidden in his truck. Inside were the original loan papers, payment receipts, and a letter from his father admitting everything. He also had a cashier’s check for $14,000, the exact amount he’d taken from my safe. He’d been working extra hours every Saturday after fixing my house, trying to replace every dollar before I found out. I asked why he hadn’t told me. He looked at me and said, “Because Dad left you a house. I wasn’t going to let him leave you his debt too.”
