Rob continued turning the pages.
He didn't rush.
He read each entry carefully, sometimes stopping to examine a receipt from the box.
Dean moved closer.
I stood beside them.
Pam remained seated at the other end of the table.
She wasn't trying to take the notebook back.
She seemed to want us to see everything.
The first pages covered the months immediately following Dad's funeral.
March 2022.
Mom's prescriptions.
Groceries.
A repair to the roof.
Then came April.
May.
June.
There was money for hearing-aid batteries.
There was fuel for medical appointments.
There were small purchases that most people wouldn't think to record.
But Pam had recorded them.
Every single one.
Rob reached a page from July.
The well pump had needed repairs.
The amount was $610.
He looked at Pam.
"Did the pump break?"
"Yes," she said. "It stopped working while Mom was doing laundry."
"Why didn't you tell us?"
"I had it fixed."
She didn't say anything more.
Rob continued reading.
The next page contained an entry for new glasses.
Two hundred and ninety dollars.
Then Christmas groceries.
Then a furnace repair.
Dean leaned closer.
"Four hundred and fifteen dollars for an igniter?"
Pam nodded.
"That was in February 2024."
I remembered that winter.
Mom had told me the furnace had been making an unusual noise.
She hadn't mentioned the repair.
I looked at Pam.
"You paid for that?"
"Yes."
"All of it?"
She nodded.
Rob kept turning pages.
There was a dental bill for eleven hundred dollars.
Then more pharmacy purchases.
More groceries.
More repairs.
The entries were written in the same neat handwriting.
No complaints.
No explanations.
Just dates and amounts.
The notebook wasn't particularly large.
But it contained four years of expenses.
Rob reached the last page.
He stopped.
There was a total written near the bottom.
The figure had been circled twice.
$14,860.
He read it again.
Then he looked toward Dean.
Dean stared at the number.
I felt my face become warm.
Fourteen thousand eight hundred and sixty dollars.
That was what Pam had spent on Mom over four years.
And it didn't include the propane contributions we had sent.
Rob closed the notebook halfway.
Then opened it again.
He checked the total.
"Pam," he said.
His voice sounded rough.
"What is all this?"
Pam looked at him.
"That's what I've paid for Mom since Dad died."
She pointed toward the notebook.
"Out of my own money."
Rob remained silent.
Dean rubbed his forehead.
I couldn't look away from the circled figure.
For four years, I had believed that sending $250 every October meant we were sharing Mom's expenses.
I had thought Pam was simply managing the propane account.
I hadn't considered how many other things she was paying for.
I hadn't asked.
I hadn't checked.
And I hadn't noticed that every time Mom needed something, Pam was usually the one who handled it.
"Fourteen thousand eight hundred and sixty?" Dean asked.
Pam nodded.
"Yes."
"That's not counting propane?"
"No."
Dean looked down at the receipts.
"Why didn't you tell us?"
Pam gave a tired little smile.
"I'm not asking you to repay it."
She placed one hand on the green notebook.
"I didn't bring this because I want money."
"Then why did you bring it?" I asked.
She looked at me.
For a moment, neither of us spoke.
Then she answered.
"Because every October, you three sent me two hundred and fifty dollars."
She looked at Rob.
"Every one of you believed that was your contribution to taking care of Mom."
Then she looked at Dean.
"And I let you believe that was enough."
Her eyes returned to me.
"But this notebook is what taking care of Mom actually looked like."
I lowered my eyes.
I could see the pink propane receipt in my memory.
The two hundred gallons.
The four hundred dollars.
The amount we had sent.
But now there was another number in front of me.
Fourteen thousand eight hundred and sixty.
I had been so focused on the missing propane money that I hadn't considered what my sister had been carrying.
That didn't make what happened in January acceptable.
Mom had still been cold.
The tank had still been almost empty.
But the story I had told myself about Pam was beginning to fall apart.
She wasn't simply someone who had taken our money and ignored our mother.
She was someone who had spent four years paying for things the rest of us rarely knew about.
And when her own household began falling apart, she had made a terrible decision.
I looked at the coffee can.
Then at the notebook.
The money on the table represented what she had managed to return.
The notebook represented what she had quietly paid.
Neither could erase January.
But together, they showed me something I should have understood much earlier.
Pam had been taking care of Mom.
We had been helping.
There was a difference.
She looked around the table.
"I'm not asking anybody to feel sorry for me," she said.
"I just wanted you to know."
Mom remained silent in Dad's recliner.
Her fingers rested on the familiar crocheted blanket.
I looked at her.
Then back at Pam.
For eleven weeks, I had waited for an explanation.
Now I had one.
But there was still something missing.
The reason Pam had spent the propane money wasn't the whole story.
And Mom, who had been sitting quietly through every word, had not yet explained why she had begged me not to confront my sister that January night.
Source: kaylestore.net
Click here to continue reading: PART 9: My Mother Had Been Listening Without Interrupting, Until She Finally Admitted That the Secret Had Started With Her
I Thought My Mother Was Simply Sleeping Through Another North Dakota Winter, Until I Walked Into Her Living Room and Realized Something Was Terribly Wrong
Part 8 of 12
