Inside the folder were copies of the original settlement documents from my accident. The real amount was printed clearly across the paperwork: $63,000, exactly as Mama had written in her letter.
There was also a copy of the false disbursement statement Wayne had shown us decades earlier. Bank records revealed that an account had been opened in my name and later emptied, confirming that the story I had believed since I was eighteen had been fabricated.
Then I discovered something even more important. Mama had consulted an attorney, and the legal memorandum inside the folder described Wayne’s actions in unmistakable terms: fraud, misappropriation of a minor’s funds, falsification of documents, and theft.
Mama had instructed Gerald to keep everything confidential until after her death. She apparently believed that if I eventually opened the flour tin, the final note would lead me directly to the evidence she had spent months collecting.
“What can be done now? Wayne is dead.”
Gerald explained that Mama had asked exactly the same question. According to the attorney she consulted, Wayne’s death didn’t necessarily erase every legal option because the original payment had come from a corporate insurance company, and documentation proving the full $63,000 settlement still existed.
The man responsible might have been gone, but the financial trail he left behind was not.
“She arranged all of this?”
Gerald nodded.
“Your mother was very thorough.”
Then he reached into another drawer and removed a second envelope. Written across the front in Mama’s handwriting were the words:
