What to say? What to say? What to say? Why hadn’t I come up with a fallback question? I blurted the question out, almost angrily, though I hadn’t intended for my tone to be confrontational.
“Are you getting paid to take care of me?”
Aunt Lydia took off her reading glasses and turned to look at me.
“No, we aren’t getting paid to take care of you,” she said. “Why would you think that?”
Why would I think that? That thought had come from when I had sifted through mom’s mail, and found the checks that had come every month, not that any of the money had found its way into my pockets. Where were those checks being sent now? And was Aunt Lydia being truthful? Or had I been mistaken?