Halfway through, his voice changed. "There's money," he said. "A lot of it. I never spent it, because it was never really mine to spend." Mara hit pause and looked at her siblings. "Wait. What does that mean, not his to spend?"
They listened on. The money came from selling their grandmother's land, money meant to be split among all the cousins. Their father had taken it and hidden it for forty years. "I kept it because I was scared of being poor again," he admitted. "But it poisoned everything I touched."
They tracked down the cheated cousins and gave back every dollar. It wasn't easy, and some of them were still angry. But when it was done, the three siblings felt lighter than they had in years. "He hid this to protect himself," Mara said. "We gave it back to set ourselves free."