I’m sitting in the bank break room right now with a file in my purse that could send my own brother-in-law to prison, and I’m trying to decide whether I do it at three o’clock or whether I just walk out the door this minute.

My hands won’t quite stay still. There’s a vending machine humming behind me and somebody left half a sandwich on the counter, and here I am, sixty-eight years old, about to blow up my whole family. Wayne is scheduled to come in at three. He doesn’t know I work here. He’s never known.

Let me back up, because none of this makes a lick of sense without the start of it.

When our mama passed, she left me a little money. A hundred and thirty-eight thousand dollars, to be exact, and I will tell you, I never in my life had a number like that with my name on it. Mama scrimped her whole life for it. She reused tea bags, bless her heart. So that money was not just money to me. It was every double shift she ever worked. My sister Diane got the house, which was worth more, and that was fine by me. We were close back then, Diane and me. We talked every single morning. I thought nothing could touch that.

Wayne is Diane’s husband. He always carried himself like a man who knew things the rest of us didn’t. He’d lean back in his chair at Thanksgiving and talk about markets and tax brackets, and we all just nodded along because, honestly, who wants to argue with a man like that over pie. Mind you, I never trusted him fully. He had this habit. He never looked at waitresses when he ordered. Never looked at the cashier when he paid.

People who served him just sort of didn’t exist to him. I noticed it years ago and filed it away the way you do.

Anyway, about six months after Mama’s funeral, Wayne started in on me about my money. “You’re losing ground just letting it sit,” he said. He said inflation was eating it alive. Then he came up with this idea that Diane and I should consolidate our accounts together “for tax purposes.” Those were his exact words, tax purposes, like he was doing me a favor. I had a bad feeling in my gut. But Diane got on the phone with me and she was so sure. “He does this for a living, sis,” she told me. “Let him help.” And I wanted to believe my sister. So I signed where they told me to sign. That’s the part I have to live with.