What I could not do was turn my grief into evidence for something the records didn’t establish.
Megan would have hated that.
Months later, David returned the personal copies she had left with him after everything had been catalogued properly.
I sat alone at my parents’ dining table and opened the envelope again.
If something happens to me, don’t trust anyone until you see what David shows you.
The first time I read those words, they frightened me.
The last time, I understood them differently.
Megan hadn’t been telling me to become suspicious of everyone forever.
She had been telling me not to let love, grief, pressure, or family hierarchy replace proof.
Beth and I never became close after that.
Too much had happened, and some wounds don’t become friendship just because two people eventually stand on the same side of the truth.
But she had stepped forward when disappearing would have been easier.
My parents stopped asking why Megan hadn’t simply told us everything.
Eventually they understood.
She had tried to protect the evidence before protecting anyone’s feelings.
Mitchell had counted on the opposite.
He had counted on my mother being too devastated to question paperwork.
On my father being too numb to challenge him.
On Beth being too frightened to contradict him.
On me being home only briefly and eager to escape the house where every room reminded me of my sister.
Most of all, he had counted on Megan no longer being there to object.
He was wrong about that last part.
Her handwriting was everywhere.
On dates.
On envelopes.
Beside transactions.
Across the margins of printed emails.
Quiet, exact, impossible to interrupt.
The morning after we buried her, I thought David was showing me the evidence of Megan’s fear.
What he was really showing me was the last thing my brother had underestimated about her.
Megan had known someone might try to control the story after she was gone.
So before she died, she made sure the story would have records of its own.
