Diane only said one thing back to all of us. I can still hear it plain as day. “She’s not dead yet.” That was the whole speech. We all kind of studied our shoes. And I figured, well, that’s just Diane being dramatic, she always was the soft one of the bunch.

So when the money kept right on disappearing after that, all sixty-seven thousand of it in four short months, it wasn’t hard to talk myself into thinking the worst about her.

I’ll tell you the part I’m most ashamed of. I went over there one afternoon, before any of this blew up, and I saw what Diane had done to the place. A hospital bed set up in the front room. Pill bottles lined up on the counter, all labeled in her handwriting. A big walk-in tub put in where the old one used to be. And you know what I thought, standing in that doorway? I thought, “Look at all the money she’s spending.” Not “look at how she’s loving her.” I looked at my grandmother’s care and saw a price tag. Go figure.

The story went around the family fast after that. Diane’s living in Mom’s house and Mom’s money’s vanishing, so you do the math. Sharon was the one who pushed hardest for charges, and Ray backed her up. And me? I’d love to tell you I stood up for my aunt. I didn’t. I told myself the truth would sort itself out, that if she was innocent she could just prove it, and that little story let me off the hook for going along with it. So we filed. Against Diane. Our own blood.

The hearing was on a Thursday. Or maybe a Friday. Doesn’t matter now. Small room, hard wooden benches, the kind that make your back ache.

The three of us sat up front behind the table, Sharon and Ray and me, sitting there like we were the ones somebody had wronged. And Diane came in all alone. No lawyer. No nothing. Just her in that blue cardigan I’d seen her wear to church a hundred times, holding an old shoebox against her chest.

They asked her straight out. “Did you withdraw sixty-seven thousand dollars from Eleanor Price’s account?” Diane stood up nice and slow and she said, “Yes.” Plain as that. My stomach did something I can’t describe. “Do you understand the charges against you?” the man asked her. “Yes,” she said. “But I’d like to submit some receipts.” And she set that shoebox down on the table and lifted the lid.