I didn’t know about the money. Not until Janet mentioned it.

“Your mother has been making monthly distributions to Simone from the estate account since January 2018. $2,200 per month.”

I did the math while standing in the break room. $2,200 times twelve is $26,400 a year.

Times eight years is $211,200. Already gone. Already spent on nails and rent and the CR-V and whatever else my sister needed to maintain the lifestyle she’d built on my mother’s back.

While I was working doubles.

Let me tell you what I did for my mother so you understand the weight of what she did to me.

In 2020, Gloria — my mother — had a hip replacement. She was seventy-two. Insurance covered part of it. Part of it, they didn’t. The balance was $34,000. Simone said she couldn’t help. She was “between things.” I picked up extra shifts. Doubles on weekends. Richard took on freelance electrical work. We paid it off in eleven months.

I drove my mother to physical therapy three times a week. Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Forty-five minutes each way from my house in Pooler to the clinic on DeRenne. I adjusted my shifts at the hospital. I ate lunch in the car. I did this for seven months.

I bought her groceries. I organized her medications. I took her to her cardiologist, her orthopedist, her primary. I sat in waiting rooms and read People magazine from 2019 and I never once complained because she was my mother and that’s what you do.

Simone visited once. She brought flowers and stayed forty minutes and posted a selfie with Gloria captioned “My queen 💕” and got 247 likes.

My mother didn’t post about me. I was there too often to be remarkable. I was furniture. You don’t take a selfie with your couch.

I called my mother the same day Janet called me. She picked up on the first ring. Like she knew.

“Mama, I talked to Janet today.”

Silence. Three seconds.

“Mama, the will. You gave everything to Simone.”