I sat in that courtroom and a small mean part of me was hoping my own aunt would go down for it. There, I said it. I’m pushing seventy-two and I’m telling a bunch of strangers something I can barely say to the mirror.

We had it in our heads that Diane robbed her own dying mother blind. Sixty-seven thousand dollars, gone in four months. And I signed my name to that complaint right along with the rest of them.

My grandmother, Eleanor, raised half this family one way or another. She raised me plenty when my folks were pulling doubles at the plant. She made the best cornbread you ever put in your mouth, and that woman loved a hot bath more than anybody I ever knew. She’d soak in there till her fingers went all pruney and come out humming some old church song. Mind you, this was before the Alzheimer’s started taking her piece by piece, before she quit knowing my name.

By last year Grandma couldn’t be left alone at all. Couldn’t walk far, couldn’t remember if she’d eaten lunch ten minutes after she ate it. Somebody had to step up and live with her, and that somebody turned out to be Diane. She moved into Grandma’s little house and she just did it. The rest of us would call once a week, ask how things were going, feel real good about ourselves, and hang up. I’ll be honest with you, that was about the size of my own contribution too.

Then the family started having these meetings. About money. About “the estate,” like we were the Rockefellers. My mother, Sharon, she’s always been the practical one, she pulled up Grandma’s bank statements at the kitchen table and her mouth went into a thin little line. “The account’s draining,” she said.

My uncle Ray nodded along like a man at church. And they started using this word over and over. Preserve. Preserve what’s left. Like Grandma was already a thing in the past tense.

I remember Diane calling me one night, real quiet, real wore out. She said the hospice care was getting expensive and she wanted to know if anybody could chip in to help carry it. So Sharon and Ray had themselves a whole sit-down about it. And they voted no. Not one more dime. “She doesn’t even know where she is,” Ray said, leaning back in his chair. “Why pour good money into it.” Preserve the inheritance. For us, he meant. For them. And me, I sat right there and I didn’t say a blessed thing.