She looked at me, her eyes searching my face for answers I didn’t yet have. “I thought your sibling was helping,” she said softly, as if trying to reassure herself. “They’ve always been so good with these things.” I nodded, not wanting to alarm her, but the seed of doubt had been planted, and it was growing fast.

After leaving Mom’s place, I drove to a nearby park, needing space to think. I sat on a bench, watching people pass by, each absorbed in their own worlds. I pulled out my phone, scrolling through messages with my sibling, looking for clues I might have missed.

There was a text from a few months back: “Handled the bills. All good.” Simple, unassuming. But now, it felt like a piece of a larger puzzle. I needed to talk to them, to understand their side of the story.

That evening, I called them, the phone ringing longer than usual before they picked up. “Hey,” I started awkwardly, “I went through some of Mom’s financial stuff today.” There was a pause, a beat of silence before they replied casually, “Yeah? Everything okay?”

“I saw your signature on some authorizations,” I said, trying to keep my tone neutral. “I just wanted to know what’s been going on.”

Their response was smooth, practiced. “Oh, that’s just to make sure things don’t fall through the cracks. You know how it is.” But their words didn’t sit right with me. Something was off, and I needed to dig deeper.

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