PART 2 The party went completely silent. Twenty people stared at my brother. “We had a memorial,” the woman said. Her name was Lupe Medina. She’d lived across the street from my parents for thirty years. “At St. Timothy’s. You cried. You said he went peacefully in his sleep.”

And there was a printout from a real estate website.

Dad’s house. Listed for sale. $489,000.

With an open house scheduled for the following Saturday.

Ray had told the neighbors Dad was dead so nobody would ask why they never saw him. He’d told Dad I was dead so he’d stop asking to call me. He’d told me Dad was “confused” so I’d stop asking to talk to him.

And every month, he’d taken my $1,200 for medication my father never received.

The pharmacy confirmed it. Dad’s prescriptions hadn’t been filled in eleven months.

Ray was charged with elder abuse, theft from a vulnerable adult, forgery, and fraud. Tiffany was charged as an accomplice. The judge called it “one of the cruelest cases of financial exploitation this court has seen.”

The house was never sold.

Dad spent nine days in the hospital. I stayed every one of them.