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still received bank statements once a month, but just shoved them in the filing cabinet, never even bothering to look—she had never considered the funds hers. And the last thing on her mind right now was this. She wished she hadn’t asked Melinda to “spill it.” Her father’s money was tied with a dark ribbon of guilt about it.
    Melinda continued, “Mom doesn’t think he had any debts. But I don’t envy you—it’s going to take you a good few meetings with lawyers et cetera to deal with it all. Sadly, I have to get back to Chicago. Damn my job! I wish I could stay with you. I mean, of course I’ll be there for the funeral . . . but . . . I’ll drop you at home and then I have to get back to Chicago. You don’t hate me, do you?”
    “No, I don’t hate you, silly,” Sylvia said despondently, “you’re like a sister to me. Better than a sister.”
    “By the way, Mom is going to identify,”—Melinda stopped mid-sentence and took a breath—“the body at the morgue so you don’t have to. She’s still at the hospital now.”
    “What would I do without you guys?” Sylvia’s eyes pooled with tears again.
    “You’ll have to call Uncle Wilbur’s lawyer for a meeting,” Melinda rasped. “And his accountant. I’ve left a list of numbers for you. I mean, look on the bright side—that money’s waiting for you. Available now. You and Tommy can finally pry yourselves out of your horseshoe world in Wyoming and start afresh. You have a choice again. I mean, hasn’t that been the whole problem all along? No choice, because of money issues?”
    The Money subject again. Even though Sylvia had unwittingly got the ball rolling, she wished Melinda would drop it. Had her dad really just gone and killed himself? Hoarding those pills, as he had done, and taking them all in one go, meant only one thing. But why?
    “You are so vague, my love,” Melinda went on. “Sometimes I don’t think you’re flesh and blood but some sort of ghost floating through life—a spirit that might start walking through doorways. How you manage, my beautiful Sylvie, to even pay a bill is an enigma to me. You are so disconnected with practical matters. Especially these days. You see, how clever your dad was? Thinking ahead. That way the money doesn’t have to wait to pass through probate. It is legally yours. He was such a smart man.”
    Sylvia was silent. All this talk was making her insides flip and fold. She turned her eyes away from the cityscape—the empty crumbling buildings, the recession letting down a whole generation, and said listlessly, “But the account is in Guatemala.”
    Melinda tittered as if to say, Money talk is easy. Feelings and relationships are the complicated truths to deal with. “So? Don’t you see, Sylvie, hun? That way you can avoid paying death duties. Uncle Wilbur was pretty crafty. He must have chosen Guatemala because it wouldn’t draw attention.”
    “Wouldn’t draw attention? Who has a bank account in Guatemala?”
    “Exactly. Who would even think to look there? Don’t you see, Sylvie? It isn’t considered an offshore tax haven like Switzerland or the Cayman Islands, yet it has all the advantages. They do not tax offshore-derived income and no capital gains tax on bank interest. No Tax Information Exchange Agreement with any country. You can get your hands on that money today if you want. It’s yours. Your dad was always canny about money.”
    Sylvia sighed. “The duplicity of it all makes me a little nervous.”
    “Do you want to pay your debts off or not?”
    “I guess. But it wasn’t the first thing on my mind.” My father has just died, Melinda.
    But this was obviously her cousin’s way of easing her own pain. Thinking practically so she didn’t have to dwell on her own emotions. She’d always done that. Always been the listener, the one to focus on other people’s problems, never her own.
    She went on, “You can finally get the house in Wyoming finished, sell, and move back