“Your Husband Just Withdrew Everything,” the Bank Told Me. I Was Stunned – He Had Passed Hours Earlier

Secrets in the Office

I hung up before she could ask more questions.

As I drove toward the diner, my mind kept returning to that image on the bank’s security footage: Paul taking everything the day his father died.

Paul, who’d arrived at my house that morning with Jessica by his side, ready to handle everything, ready to manage me.

I realized now: to keep me distracted and pliable while they did what?

The pieces weren’t fitting together yet, but I could feel them starting to align, creating a picture I didn’t want to see.

At a red light, I closed my eyes and saw Richard’s face—not as he’d been in those final days, gray and diminished, but as he’d been years ago: strong, proud, sometimes too proud.

What secrets had he taken to his grave, and what had he left behind for me to find?

Caroline was already at the diner when I arrived, sitting in a corner booth with her hands wrapped around a coffee cup.

She looked up as I approached, and I saw the worry etched across her face.

My daughter had always been able to read me better than anyone.

“Mom, you’re scaring me,” she said as I slid into the seat across from her.

“What’s happened?”

I glanced around the diner.

Rosie’s was nearly empty at this hour, just a couple of truckers at the counter and Rosie herself in the kitchen.

Still, I lowered my voice.

“Yesterday afternoon, while Paul was supposedly handling things at the hospital, he went to the bank and withdrew every penny from the joint account your father and I shared. $247,000.”

Caroline’s face went pale.

“What? No, that can’t be right. Paul wouldn’t—”

“I saw the security footage myself. It was him.”

I pulled out my phone and showed her a photo I’d asked Jennifer to email me—a still frame from the video.

“He forged your father’s signature.”

My daughter stared at the image, her mouth opening and closing without sound.

Finally, she whispered:

“Oh my god. Oh my god. Mom, does he know you know?”

“Not yet.”

“We have to call the police right now. This is theft. It’s fraud. It’s—”

“Wait.”

I put my hand over hers.

“Before we do anything, I need to understand what’s happening. This wasn’t random, Caroline. Paul planned this. He knew exactly when to do it, how to do it, which means he’s been thinking about this for a while. But why? Paul has a good job. He and Jessica aren’t hurting for money.”

“Weren’t they?”

I realized I didn’t actually know much about my son’s financial situation.

He worked in commercial real estate development—something that had always seemed vaguely successful.

But he’d become increasingly secretive over the years.

Family dinners had turned into interrogations where Jessica would deflect every personal question with practiced ease.

“I need to know what else is going on,” I said.

“Before I confront him, I need to understand the full picture.”

Caroline nodded slowly, her legal training kicking in.

She wasn’t a criminal attorney, but she understood strategy.

“Okay. So what do you want to do?”

“I want to go through your father’s papers—his office, his files, everything. If Paul was planning this, maybe your father knew something. Maybe there are other documents, other accounts.”

“Do you think Dad was involved?”

The pain in her voice was obvious.

I didn’t want to think it, but I’d learned one terrible truth in the last hour: I didn’t know my family as well as I thought I did.

“I don’t know,” I admitted.

“But I need to find out.”

We finished our coffee and drove separately back to the house—my house.

I had to start thinking of it that way now.

Paul’s car was still in the driveway, and through the window, I could see him and Jessica moving around in the kitchen.

“How do we get them to leave?” Caroline asked as we stood outside.

“Leave that to me.”

I walked in through the front door, Caroline behind me, and arranged my face into what I hoped looked like exhausted grief.

It wasn’t hard; the grief was real enough, even if its sources were multiplying.

“Mom.”

Paul stood quickly, Jessica right beside him.

“Where were you? We’ve been worried.”

“I needed some air,” I said simply.

“I went for a drive.”

“You should have told us,” Jessica said, that false concern coating every word.

“You shouldn’t be alone at a time like this.”

“I’m not alone. Caroline’s here.”

I moved toward the stairs.

“I’m going to lie down for a while. I didn’t sleep well.”

“Of course,” Paul said.

“We’ll stay down here and make some calls about the funeral home, unless you want to—”

“You handle it,” I said.

“I trust you.”

The words tasted like ash in my mouth, but I saw something flicker in Paul’s eyes: relief, satisfaction.

He thought I was giving him control, making him the decision-maker.

Good, let him think that.

Caroline followed me upstairs, and we went to the master bedroom.

As soon as the door closed, she whispered:

“Dad’s office.”

I nodded.

Richard’s office was at the end of the hall, a small room he’d claimed as his sanctuary.

I hadn’t been in there much over the years.

It had been his space, full of his books and his papers and his secrets.

The door was locked.

I stared at it, confused.

“He never locked this door. Do you have a key?”

“I don’t even know where he kept keys.”

I tried the handle again, frustrated.

Then I heard footsteps on the stairs.

“Mom,” Paul’s voice.

“Do you need anything?”

Caroline and I exchanged glances.

“No, honey,” I called out.

“Just getting some things from the bedroom.”

We heard him pause, then continue down the hall.

He stopped right outside the office door.

“Mom, I was thinking I should probably start going through Dad’s papers. You know, for the estate, the will, all that legal stuff. Do you know where he kept his important documents?”

There it was.

He wanted access to Richard’s office.

He wanted to get there first.

“I’m not sure,” I said through the door.

“I’ll look for them tomorrow. I’m too tired right now.”

Another pause.

“Okay, sure. Just let me know if you need help.”

His footsteps retreated, but slowly, reluctantly.

Caroline pulled me into the bedroom and closed the door.

“He’s looking for something,” she whispered.

“The question is, what?”

The Secret Life of Richard Cuban

We waited until we heard Paul and Jessica leave an hour later, their voices carrying false cheerfulness about picking up programs from the funeral home.

As soon as their car pulled away, I went to work.

I’d lived in this house for 43 years; I knew its secrets: the loose floorboard in the hallway closet where I’d hidden Christmas presents, the false back in the linen cabinet where I’d kept emergency cash.

And I knew that Richard, for all his faults, had been predictable in certain ways.

In our bedroom, I went to his nightstand and pulled out the bottom drawer completely.

Taped to the underside was a small envelope.

Inside were three keys.

“Mom, you’re brilliant,” Caroline breathed.

The third key opened the office door.

The room looked undisturbed, everything in its place.

Richard’s desk sat beneath the window, papers neatly stacked, pens in their holder.

His bookshelves lined two walls, full of history books and old novels.

Nothing seemed unusual, but I knew better than to trust appearances now.

“I’ll start with the filing cabinet,” I told Caroline.

We worked in silence, methodical and careful.

Caroline found bank statements, utility bills, tax returns—all ordinary.

The filing cabinet yielded insurance policies, medical records, the deed to the house.

Then Caroline said:

“Mom, look at this.”

She was holding a folder marked “Property Documents.”

Inside were papers for our house, as expected, but there were also documents for another property: a cabin in the Pocono Mountains, purchased eight years ago.

“Did you know about this?” Caroline asked.

I shook my head.

We’d never had a cabin, never discussed buying one.

Where had the money come from?

Beneath that folder was another, unmarked.

Caroline opened it, and we both stared at the contents: credit card statements, not for cards I recognized.

The charges went back three years: hotels, restaurants, jewelry stores, tens of thousands of dollars.

“Oh, mom,” Caroline whispered.

An affair.

Richard had been having an affair.

The grief I’d been holding at bay transformed into something sharper, harder.

But I couldn’t afford to fall apart now.

I needed to think.

“Keep looking,” I said, my voice flat.

Ten minutes later, Caroline found the life insurance policy: $2 million, dated six months ago.

The beneficiary had been changed from me to Paul.

And there it was: the missing piece.

“Paul knew,” I said slowly.

“He knew about the life insurance. He knew Dad was going to die, and he knew he’d be getting $2 million.”

“So why steal from the bank account?” Caroline asked.

That was the question.

If Paul was inheriting $2 million, why risk everything for a quarter million from the bank, unless he needed money immediately?

Unless he was desperate?