Daniel kept his hand on the page for a second before sliding it completely across the desk.
I recognized my mother’s signature immediately.
Jasmine always made the J enormous, looping it back beneath the rest of her name as if she were signing something important even when she was only writing a birthday card.
There it was in dark ink beneath a dated acknowledgment.
Above it was a payment record from the event hall in Phoenix.
I read the amount twice.
Six thousand dollars.
Paid by Everett.
Already received.
I looked up at Daniel.
“What is this?”
“The contribution your husband agreed to make toward Penelope’s party,” he said.
“He paid it directly to the venue.
Your mother signed this acknowledgment confirming that the amount represented his full contribution.”
For a moment, I heard nothing but the faint hum of the office air conditioner.
My mother had called me twenty-three times outside Everett’s funeral to demand money he had already paid.
“She said there was still money owed.”
“There may be,” Daniel said carefully.
“But not because Everett failed to honor his promise.”
He turned another page.
It was an itemized statement from the venue.
Everett’s payment had been credited weeks earlier.
After that payment, several additions had been made to the event package: extended live music, a larger champagne service, upgraded decorations, extra photography time, and additional catering.
Those upgrades had created the remaining balance.
I stared at the list.
Gold balloon installation.
Premium cake display.
Additional entertainment hours.
The details from the Instagram stories were sitting in front of me as numbers.
“They upgraded everything after Everett paid?”
Daniel nodded.
“According to the records he gave me.”
“Why did he give you records about my sister’s birthday?”
Daniel leaned back slightly.
“Because the requests didn’t stop after he paid.”
He reached into the folder and removed a small storage device, then placed it on the desk without turning it toward me.
“Everett asked me to preserve several messages.
He said he didn’t want you dealing with this if the subject came up again.”
My chest tightened.
That sounded exactly like Everett.
He hated confrontation, but he hated watching people corner me even more.
Whenever my family asked for something, I had a habit of saying yes before I had enough time to decide whether I wanted to.
Everett noticed that before I did.
“You don’t have to earn your place in your own family,” he once told me after I had spent an entire weekend fixing a problem Penelope had created and then apologized because I couldn’t stay another day.
At the time, I laughed it off.
Sitting in Daniel’s office in my funeral clothes, I finally understood why Everett had stopped laughing with me.
Daniel asked permission before playing the first recording.
I nodded.
Everett’s voice filled the quiet office.
For one second, I almost broke.
It was ordinary Everett—not a formal goodbye, not some dramatic final message.
He sounded slightly tired and mildly irritated, the way he did when someone had called during dinner.
Then my mother’s voice came through the recording.
“I’m just saying six thousand isn’t going as far as we expected.
Penelope has a lot of people coming.”
Everett answered, “Jasmine, we agreed on six.
