She already knew since October, and when I asked her why she’d said nothing, she said, “Because Dad asked me not to.” She had found the same allegation in a letter my brother sent our father months before he died. Dad had written a response, but he’d never mailed it. My sister had found it in the desk while looking for funeral documents.
She handed me a copy. Dad had written that I hadn’t isolated him from anyone. He had stopped answering my brother’s calls because my brother kept asking about the will. Dad wrote that I was the one who took him to appointments, fixed things around the house, and sat with him when he couldn’t sleep. My brother had visited twice a year and apparently counted those visits as proof that he had been present.
But the letter contained something neither of us expected. Dad had written that my brother had asked him to change the beneficiary on one of his accounts in 2019. Dad refused. After that, my brother stopped coming regularly. The lawsuit had been filed nine days before the funeral because my brother believed the estate was already worth more than he’d been told.
My sister looked at me and said Dad had left instructions about what to do if my brother ever sued. She pulled another envelope from her purse. Inside was a handwritten statement, dated three weeks before Dad died, describing exactly why he had changed his will. At the bottom he’d written: “If he says his brother was keeping him from me, show him the calendar.” My sister had kept that calendar for months. It showed every visit, every appointment, and every time my brother had been invited. The last page had only one entry: “He called again about the money.”
