Part 4
“Called his sister.”
Dad began to explain, but I kept talking. From the bank, the shop, the side of the road, anywhere he had been standing, he could have called and said what Curtis had threatened. We could have found a crisis service or a hospital. Somebody could have stayed with him while trained help assessed what he meant.
“I did call you,” Dad said.
“Afterward. And you didn’t tell me.”
“He begged me not to.”
I leaned forward until my elbows rested on my knees. A dryer behind me buzzed, stopped, then buzzed again.
“Did you ask him directly whether he intended to hurt himself?”
Dad hadn’t. He hadn’t called anyone else, either. Curtis had said he would leave if strangers showed up, and Dad was afraid to push him.
“I got him through it,” he said.
“You can’t know selling my house was what kept him alive.”
For several seconds I heard only his breathing. Then I stood to move my uniforms into the dryer, and we ended the call.
The next morning, water slapped against the sides of a test tank in Curtis’s shop. He was bent over an outboard with a mechanic’s stethoscope pressed against it, listening so carefully he didn’t hear me enter.
The place stood behind a boat-storage yard in a corrugated building with KESTRA on the sign. Engine covers lined one wall, and the workbench near him was orderly: fittings separated by size, cable ends capped, tools laid on clean cloth. Curtis had always been able to give machinery the patience he denied people.
He saw me, shut down the engine, and pulled the stethoscope away.
“Phones still work, Jules.”
“Not especially well between us.”
A corner of his mouth lifted before he looked down. He wiped his fingers on a rag, working around a cut near his knuckle.
Dad and Mom used to stop talking when Curtis listened to an engine. Even as a teenager he could isolate a bearing noise neither of them could hear. Standing in the shop, I watched him reach back and tighten a fitting by feel.
“Dad played your message,” I said. “The one before the sale.”
He threw the rag onto the bench. “He’d do that.”
“Were you planning to hurt yourself?”
“I wasn’t going to wait here for someone to arrest me.”
“Curtis.”
“I was scared. I said things.”
“Did you understand what he thought you meant?”
He turned toward the parts shelves and shifted a small box to another shelf. “He needed to take it seriously.”
I waited until he faced me again.
“You emailed my power of attorney to Fenwick.”
“He asked to see what Dad had. I scanned it.”
“And when he returned a page with my supposed signature?”
“He said the new wording covered what Dad was already doing.”
“You knew I hadn’t signed it.”
“I didn’t produce the thing, Julia.”
“You let it be used.”
He stepped away from the bench. Fuel and warm oil clung to his shirt.
“You want to start at the beginning? Mom got sick. You sent money, and I shut this place every afternoon because she wouldn’t let an aide near her hair. I lost work. I lost a contract I couldn’t afford to lose. Dad was awake half the night, and you were making spreadsheets.”
I looked at the fine scar on his wrist. I remembered him showing me how to help Mom sit up without pulling on her shoulders. He had learned the small movements that spared her pain. I had been stationed across the country, taking leave when I could and paying for what I couldn’t do in person.
“You took care of her,” I said. “I should’ve been there more. You still couldn’t take my home.”
He drew a breath through his teeth. “You came out of those years with a career. I came out with this place barely open.”
“And you put what it had into bets.”
“I had employees to pay.”
“Customers paid you for work. Where did their money go?”
He braced both hands on the bench. “Three deposits. I used three deposits to keep operating.”
“Some of it went to gambling.”
He picked up the rag again and folded it until there was no clean side showing. He didn’t answer.
The deposits had been for engines and parts that were never ordered. Two of those customers were the people named in the settlement instructions. The money from my house had refunded them. It hadn’t removed the transfers from the account records the sheriff was already seeking.
Curtis acknowledged that he knew Dad’s house was facing foreclosure. He had also read the directions dividing the sale money. Then he leaned against the bench and lowered his voice.
There was a way, he said, to keep it from becoming worse. I could tell the insurer I’d talked about selling. Dad could describe the amendment as badly handled paperwork instead of a fraudulent document. Bethany’s policy would cover her, and I had a steady salary and military housing options. The money was already spent.
“Just say we had reason to think you’d agreed.”
“I won’t lie about consent.”
He stared at the floor by my boots. I asked again whether he was thinking about hurting himself now. He said no, sharply, then swore at me for asking.
Outside, I sat in the rental car with the window open and called the county crisis service. I repeated the old voicemail, his answers that morning, and his location. The counselor took the information and arranged direct follow-up. I stayed on the line until she finished, then sent Dad the crisis number with a message telling him not to offer money or secrecy in place of an assessment.
On Monday, Valerie accompanied me to the financial-crimes detective already handling the customer complaints. I brought the genuine power of attorney and let him examine it. We supplied a copy, and I signed a statement covering the deed and my conversations with Dad and Curtis. Valerie took custody of the original for her file.
The closing lawyer’s insurer was reviewing the transaction too. The notary whose acknowledgment appeared on the amendment said she had never met me and had not notarized it. My duty and travel records put me on Guam, not in Tennessee, on the date of the claimed appearance.
The detective made notes and asked for the supporting records. He didn’t offer an opinion about when I might live in my house again.
Three days later, Valerie called me back to her office. She had a document waiting at the end of the conference table, positioned so I could read it before she spoke.
“Your father retained counsel,” she said. “This declaration went to the insurer and the investigator. His lawyer copied me.”
I sat and turned the first page.
Dad claimed he had located the amendment without Curtis’s involvement and taken it to Fenwick himself. He said he alone had arranged the disbursements. According to the declaration, he had told Curtis the money came from a loan I approved.
The last section said my brother had known nothing about a false document or an unauthorized sale until I arrived at the house.
Below it, Dad had sworn the account was true…
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