That word came from my mother, by the way. Not me. When I was fourteen, I overheard her on the phone with my aunt. “Mason’s my star,” she said. “Ethan’s my backup. Every family needs one.”
She laughed when she said it. I don’t think she meant it to be cruel. I think she meant it as a compliment, in some strange way. Ethan’s reliable. Ethan’s the safety net.
But I was fourteen. I went upstairs and lay on my bed and stared at the ceiling for a long time.
For thirty years after that, my family treated me exactly like a backup.
Mason’s mistakes were “stress.” When he got a DUI at nineteen, Mom said the cop had it out for him. When he dropped out of Purdue after three semesters, she said college “just wasn’t his thing.” When he wrecked his first car, and his second, and his third, it was “bad luck.” When he got fired from a car dealership for punching a customer, it was “passion.” He just felt things deeply. He was a passionate person.
Mason’s debts were bad luck too. Credit cards. A failed fitness supplement business. A boat he bought and couldn’t make payments on. Mom covered what she could. Dad covered what he could, until he got tired of it. And when they couldn’t, they called me.
“Can you help your brother out, honey? Just this once?”
It was never just once.
I went to IU. I got a degree in criminal justice. I took a job right out of college with Midwest Mutual, one of the biggest auto and home insurance companies in the state. I started in claims. Then I moved over to the Special Investigations Unit.
If you don’t know what that is, it’s the department that investigates insurance fraud. Staged accidents. Fake thefts. Arson. Inflated claims. People who burn their own houses down. People who push their own cars into lakes and report them stolen. People who hire somebody to rear-end them so they can sue.
I’m good at it. I’ve been doing it for eleven years. I run a team of six investigators now. I work closely with the Indiana State Police auto theft task force and the Marion County prosecutor’s office. I’ve testified in court more than forty times.
My family had no idea what I actually did.
I’m serious. I’d told them a hundred times. But to my mother, I “worked in an office for an insurance company.” To Mason, I was “the insurance guy.” When I got promoted to supervisor, Mom said, “That’s nice, honey,” and asked if I could help Mason with his car payment.
Nobody ever asked a single question about my job.
That turned out to matter a lot.
When Dad got sick, he asked me to be the executor of his estate.
Not Mason. Not Mom. Me.
He told me in his hospital room at IU Health, about two weeks before he died. He was thin and yellow from the jaundice and his voice was barely a whisper. He grabbed my wrist with his bony hand and pulled me close.
“Ethan,” he said. “You’re going to have to handle things. After.”
“I know, Dad.”
“Your mother can’t. She’ll give it all to your brother.” He coughed. “And your brother will lose it in a year. Like everything else.”
“Dad…” 