The Money My Sister Thought I Had

Tammy did. Tammy took it. And then Tammy, who had convinced herself that this card was the key to the fortune her sneaky sister had been hiding, started to spend.

She did it the way a person does when they think they have finally gotten into the vault. She did not take twenty dollars. She took it all. Over nine days she pulled that little account down to nothing and a few dollars past nothing. She put a deposit on a new side-by-side four wheeler at the dealership in the county seat. She took Rick to the casino out on the interstate. She bought herself a set of patio furniture and a fire pit and she posted a picture of it on the Facebook with her feet up and a drink in her hand, and underneath it she wrote, when you finally get what is yours, with a little sunglasses face. She thought she had cracked me open. She thought she had found the pile and started hauling it out, and this, this four thousand dollars of patio furniture and casino buffets, was just the first bite.

She had no idea that she had drained a bird feeder. She had no idea there was no pile. She had no idea that the real money, Mama’s real money, the money that kept her mother safe, was sitting in a place her card could not touch and never would, humming along, paying Prairie Vista on the first of every month the way it had for three years.

And she had no idea that by draining the little account, she had just lit a fuse.

Because the little checking account did one other thing besides buy pharmacy refills. It covered the auto-pay for Mama’s prescriptions at the pharmacy that delivered to the home, and it covered the small monthly supplement to the home for the extras, the salon, the activities, the things the main payment did not. When Tammy pulled that account to zero, those two little payments bounced. And a bounced payment, it turns out, is a loud thing. It is a whole lot louder than a quiet woman keeping a yellow pad.

I got the call on a Thursday. It was the business office at Prairie Vista, a woman named Reba I had worked with for three years, and she was apologetic and confused. Carol, she said, the supplement payment came back on us, and the pharmacy called over here too, your mama’s blood thinner did not go through. I just wanted to check with you before I did anything, because in three years you have never once had a payment come back, and I know that is not like you.

No, I said. That is not like me.

And I sat there with the phone in my hand and the whole thing came clear all at once, the way the whole prairie lights up in a lightning flash, every fence post, every blade.