“She doesn’t need much at her age anyway,” my sister Sarah said, setting her new designer leather purse on the laminate counter while our mother sat shivering in a kitchen set to 58 degrees.

It was a Tuesday morning in January, and the wind outside was howling.

The house was freezing. I had driven four hours from my home in Grand Rapids to Flint, Michigan, because Mom hadn’t been answering her phone for three days.

Mom was sitting at the kitchen table, wearing the same stained pink terrycloth bathrobe she had worn on the day our father died eight months ago. Her hands were tucked deep into her sleeves. Her fingers were blue at the tips.

I walked over to the thermostat in the hallway. It was set to 58 degrees. I pushed the button to raise it, but the plastic cover had a small padlock on it. I looked at Sarah, my chest tightening.

“The utility bills are through the roof,” Sarah said. She was leaning against the counter, refilling her travel mug with coffee. She didn’t look at me. She looked at her phone.

“Sarah, she is seventy-eight years old,” I said. “Why is there a lock on the thermostat?”

“Mom kept turning it up to eighty,” Sarah replied, her voice flat and completely unbothered. “It’s a waste of money. I’m just trying to keep the budget tight. We have to be smart.”

I went to the refrigerator. I opened the door, and the smell of sour milk hit me immediately. The carton on the shelf had an expiration date from three weeks ago. There was half a loaf of stale white bread and a jar of yellow mustard. That was all.

Our father had died after a brief battle with lung cancer. He had worked thirty-eight years at the Chevrolet metal fabrication plant in Flint.

He was a frugal man who drove old Buicks until the rust ate the doors, clipped coupons, and kept a vegetable garden in the backyard.

He had saved a total of $520,000 in cash and investments. He also left Mom a fully paid-off split-level home and a steady monthly pension. Before he died, he held my hand and told me to make sure Mom was taken care of.

But I lived four hours away. I had a demanding job as a school district administrator and three teenagers of my own. Sarah, who lived ten minutes from Mom, had stepped up immediately.

“I’ll handle everything,” Sarah had told me at the funeral. She sat at the head of the dining table, holding Mom’s hand. “You have enough on your plate. Let me do this for Dad.”

I believed her. I felt a massive sense of relief, and I actually defended Sarah to my sister-in-law when she warned me about Sarah’s history with money. That is the part I am deeply ashamed of now.