“Protect her from what?” my grandmother’s contempt was quiet and devastating. “Financial security? The ability to graduate without debt? Please. Enlighten me.”
I looked at my parents — really looked, the way you look at people when the frame around them has suddenly changed — and saw things I had somehow not noticed before. My mother’s designer handbag that she’d claimed to buy on sale. My father’s car, the one he said came through some special company program. The kitchen renovation two years ago, supposedly financed by a home equity loan.
“How much is left?” I asked. My voice barely rose above a whisper. “Of the three million. How much is still there?”
Neither of them answered.
“Answer your granddaughter,” Vivien said.
“We’ll need to go through everything carefully,” my father said. “There were a lot of complex transactions. We invested in several business opportunities. Some paid off, some didn’t. We paid for your education, Maggie. Your rent during college. Your car insurance. All of those things came from somewhere.”
“I have student loans,” I said. My mind was doing math I didn’t want to do. “Fifty thousand dollars in debt I’m going to be paying off for a decade. And you just said you paid for my education from the trust fund.”
“Partially,” my mother said quickly. “College is expensive. Even with the trust fund, we had to make choices.”
“I paid for college,” my grandmother said, her voice now very quiet. “The trust fund was for after. To give her a foundation. And you dare to stand here and tell me you spent it on things you should have paid for yourselves?”
People were definitely watching now. I could feel it. I wanted to disappear and also desperately needed to stay and get every answer.
“I want to see the paperwork too,” I said. “Everything. Every bank statement, every investment record, every check you wrote. If that money was mine, I have a right to know what happened to it.”
