“Because it was yours. It was always yours.”
The following Monday, I called Philip Crenshaw, the attorney Mama had consulted. He wasn’t surprised to hear my voice because Mama had told him that sooner or later, I would discover everything and contact him.
What followed wasn’t quick or simple. The trucking company involved in my original accident had merged with another business, the insurer had reorganized, decades-old records had to be retrieved, and a forensic accountant had to compare the legitimate settlement documents against Wayne’s fabricated paperwork.
The process lasted eleven months.
Eventually, the insurance company agreed to resolve the claim for $41,000. They didn’t formally accept responsibility for Wayne’s actions, but the surviving records established enough evidence of what had happened that they agreed to settle.
Combined with the $18,940 Mama had hidden inside the flour tin, I recovered almost $60,000.
It wasn’t the full $63,000 Wayne had taken, and it certainly didn’t include decades of lost interest. More importantly, receiving that money in my late forties could never replace receiving it at eighteen, when it might have paid for college, helped me buy a home, funded a business, or simply given me choices I never had.
That version of my life could never be returned.
But during those eleven months, I began understanding something about Mama that I hadn’t understood when I first read her confession. She couldn’t erase the moment when she failed me, so she had spent the rest of her life trying to repair whatever pieces she still could.
Five dollars at a time. One document at a time. One letter at a time.
Mama had failed me when I needed her most, and nothing could change that. But she had also spent decades trying to make that failure right.
