Chapter 6 - THE OTHER ACCOUNT
The caregiver payments were not the only secret.
During the review, the attorney asked whether anyone had ever created savings or education accounts in my name.
I said no.
Becca looked at me.
“Your grandmother did.”
Our grandmother died when I was eleven. I remembered her telling me I was good with numbers and should study engineering. I remembered a birthday card in which she wrote that she had “put something aside for the future.”
My father told me she meant advice.
She had meant money.
Grandma established education accounts for me and each of my siblings. Mine contained nearly thirty-two thousand dollars when she died.
As my custodian, my father could approve withdrawals for qualified educational expenses.
He emptied most of it over six years.
Some withdrawals were labeled tutoring, computer equipment and academic programs.
I had received none of those things.
One payment supposedly covered a summer mathematics academy during the same month I stayed home caring for the twins.
Another listed a laptop purchased for me.
The laptop in our house belonged to my father.
Most of the money moved into the same household account that received the false caregiver payments.
My father had spent years telling me college was my responsibility while quietly draining the money my grandmother left to help me attend.
That was the secret that finally stripped away the last excuse I had made for them.
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They had not merely failed to support my future.
They had converted it into income.
