The checkbook was still open on the kitchen table where I left it the night before. Eleven checks stared up at me. None of them looked like Mama’s writing even though her name was at the bottom of every one.

I drove out Tuesday after the bank called. They said the activity was unusual and they wanted to check before more cleared. I had been handling her account from my place forty minutes away ever since Dad died three years ago. Mama never argued about it back then.

She was sitting in her recliner when I got there. The television was on low like always. I asked her straight out who had been helping with the checks.

“Denise said they were bills that needed paying,” Mama told me. “She filled them out so my hand wouldn’t cramp up.”

I told her she does not have a car loan or two new credit cards. She does not have a rental in Myrtle Beach either. Mama just looked at the television and said Denise knew what she was doing with all that.

Denise had been coming three days a week for about six months. Mama talked about her the way some people talk about their kids. She said Denise brought her favorite coffee and stayed to watch her shows sometimes. I only made it out on weekends when work let me.

I called the agency the next morning and asked for Denise’s file. They emailed it over before lunch. Most of it was the usual stuff, her application and training certificates. The last page was a letter from the place she worked before this one.

That letter said she had been let go after a family complained about checks written to places their mother did not owe.

The agency had kept her on anyway. I read that page twice before I closed the email.

I waited until her next shift on Thursday. She came in at nine like she always did and started helping Mama with lunch. I asked her to step into the kitchen with me for a minute.

She wiped her hands on a dish towel and followed. I laid the checks out on the counter.

“These aren’t Mama’s writing,” I said.

Denise looked at them for a second. “Her hand shakes now. I was just helping her get them done.”

I asked why the money was going to a car loan and a vacation rental in her name. She said Mama wanted to help her out with some things. She said it was between the two of them and nobody else needed to know.

Mama called from the living room asking what we were talking about. I went back in and told her what the letter from the agency said. She did not want to hear any of it.

“Denise is good to me,” Mama said. “She shows up when you can’t.”