…Emily’s future.”
Emily was Robert’s niece. The daughter of his younger brother, Danny, who was killed in a car accident nineteen years ago, when Emily was two.
I drove to my former mother-in-law’s assisted living facility the next morning. Her name is June. She’s eighty-four, and she always liked me more than her son did. She held my hands and told me the truth.
Danny didn’t die in a simple accident. Robert was driving. He was drunk. He’d swerved off the road and hit a tree. Danny was killed instantly. Robert walked away with a broken arm. June arrived at the scene before the police, and Robert begged her to say Danny had been driving. June, in shock and grief, agreed. She spent the rest of her life regretting it.
“I couldn’t lose both sons,” she whispered. “So I lost my honesty instead.”
To make amends, she saved every dollar she could for Emily. Danny’s life insurance had gone to Robert, as the “surviving brother,” because Danny had named him beneficiary before Emily was born. Robert spent it in two years. June hid her own savings, piece by piece, inside her couch, where Robert would never think to look. She meant it to pay for Emily’s college.
When June moved into assisted living, Robert’s new wife sold her furniture online, without asking. The couch ended up in my apartment.
“He knows what he did,” June said. “If he finds out about the money, he’ll take it, like he took everything else.”
I didn’t tell Robert. I contacted Emily instead. She was twenty-one, working two jobs and studying part-time to become a nurse. She hadn’t seen her grandmother in years, because Robert had told her June didn’t want visitors.
I took Emily to see June. They cried for an hour. Then June handed her the money.
Emily used it to finish nursing school. June gave a written statement to the police about the accident. The statute of limitations on the drunk driving charge had long passed. But June wanted the record to say who was driving. Emily wanted her father’s name cleared.
Robert hasn’t spoken to his mother since. Emily visits her every Sunday. I go too, when I can. I’m still using the couch. It’s very comfortable.
