I kid you not! There were stacks of $100 bills, banded and wrapped! I blinked, counted quickly — there had to be at least $200,000 in there, maybe more! My heart thumped in my chest. Kiran’s eyes widened.
“There’s more,” he said, reaching into the pouch.
He pulled out a velvet box, the kind used for jewelry. I opened it slowly and found a delicate gold bracelet inside. I recognized it immediately. It was mine, or it had been. I’d sold it years ago, during the worst part of our financial mess, when rent was due and I had no other options.
“How… how is this here?” I murmured.
Kiran frowned. “Did you sell this?”
“Yes. I didn’t want to, but I had no choice.”
He looked toward the safe again, his voice quiet. “I think Dad repurchased it. I think he’s been planning this for a long time.”
I sat down on an overturned paint bucket, my legs too weak to keep me standing. The envelope trembled in my hands as I opened it. There was a sheet of paper, a letter.
“Jen,” it began. “If you’re reading this, then something happened to me, and Harold is no longer around. I know how bad things got, and I’m sorry I left you with all of it. That was never the plan.”
My throat tightened as I read. Michael’s words flowed through the page as if he were sitting beside me.
“You always asked why I stayed in touch with my mother, even after everything. The truth is, I didn’t trust my father. But I knew he’d never shut Kiran out. I told my mom that it was the only way I’d stay civil. What he didn’t know was that Mom and I were using those visits to move things into place, including this letter.”
I paused, my eyes blurring.
“My mom initially took money out slowly, in cash, from a savings account Harold never knew about. She placed it in a shoebox under their bed, but Harold found it. Mom knew he’d squander it, so she secretly moved it to the safe in the basement where he wouldn’t find it.”
A woman holding a box while seated on a bed | Source: Pexels
My late husband explained how we happened to visit on the day Harold planned to use the money, so he assumed we stole it. Michael’s mother never corrected her husband because she knew what was at stake.
She had to live with sacrificing the relationship we had with her to secure the money for our future. The plan was that after Harold died, Kiran, Michael, and I would receive the money because my FIL sure wouldn’t leave us a cent.
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