Chapter 3
David posted a whole set of photos on Instagram during his first month in the house on Riverside Avenue.
Every inch of it was done up. There were imported leather couches, crystal chandeliers, a smart toilet, and a wall of glass inside the entry that looked out on a manicured private garden.
He put a caption on it.
[Grateful to my father. Everything worked out the way it was meant to. From today, I'll take care of this home for you.]
More than a hundred comments underneath, all congratulations and best wishes.
Looking at those photos made me sick.
I'd been to that house when I was a kid.
My dad took me there once and told me it would be mine when I got married.
He said that when I was twelve.
After that, he never mentioned it again.
Now I knew why.
By his second month in the house, David had started renovating.
He paved the garden over for parking, because he'd bought two cars, a Mercedes-Benz and a Porsche.
He turned the study into a game room and put ten thousand dollars of gaming equipment in it.
Where was the money coming from?
Nobody had to guess.
Seven of my dad's twenty-five properties were already rented out.
Together they brought in about forty thousand dollars a month.
For a twenty-six-year-old, forty thousand a month was plenty to burn.
The third month brought something worse.
David posted an invitation on Instagram.
He was throwing a housewarming party.
The address was the house on Riverside Avenue.
He invited my dad's old friends and business partners, and he invited me.
The invitation came by courier.
It was gold-foiled, the expensive kind.
The card read: [Mr. Alex Carter is cordially invited to celebrate our new home.]
I squeezed it until the paper crumpled.
"I'm not going," I said.
My mom was in the kitchen cleaning vegetables.
"You're going."
"Why should I?"
"Because you're your father's son." She snapped a stalk of celery and stripped the old leaves off. "So is he. If he invites you to dinner and you don't show, what do people say?
"They'll say you're petty."
"I am petty!"
"Then you really should go," she said, not even looking up. "If you're going to be petty, you have to see it for yourself."
"See what?"
"See just how much they're flaunting it."
Her tone was so casual.
It was so flat I almost missed what was underneath.
I showed up that day.
I went alone.
The house was worse than the photos.
More than a dozen cars sat out front, there was a tent in the yard, and he'd hired a full catering crew.
He had laid out thirty-odd tables of seafood, wine, and lobster, like a wedding.
David worked the door in a sharp suit with his hair slicked back, shaking hands and thanking everyone for coming.
When he spotted me, he smiled.
It was the same smile.
"Alex, you're here."
He walked over and put an arm around my shoulders like it was nothing.
He patted me twice.
The pats were light, and every one of them made me lock up.
"Come on in. I saved you a seat, right next to mine."
He walked me to the head table.
The head table was all my dad's oldest friends.
Their faces did complicated things when they saw me.
Some of them pitied me.
Some of them were embarrassed.
Some of them had come for the show.
Linda came out from the back in a red evening gown with her hair pinned up, playing the lady of the house.
She carried a glass of wine to the table.
"Thank you all for coming. Richard is gone, but nothing he built will go to waste. David will hold this home together for him."
Her eyes swept over me on the words this home.
The look said exactly one thing.
This home had nothing to do with me anymore.
I put my head down and drank a spoonful of soup.
It was scalding hot.
It burned my tongue numb.
But I didn't spit it out.
Something hotter than that was coming, and I knew it.
David stood up to make his rounds halfway through the meal.
He toasted one table at a time.
When he got to the head table, he came around to me with his glass.
"Alex, let me toast you," he said.
I looked up at him.
He looked completely sincere.
The sincerity was enough to turn my stomach.
"Alex, I know this can't be comfortable for you." He dropped his voice. "But Dad made his decision, and we both have to respect it, right?"
He paused.
"Besides, you and your mother never spent much on him all these years. Everything was fifty-fifty over there, wasn't it?"
As soon as he said that, the head table went quiet for a moment.
Then I heard somebody suck in a breath.
What David meant was clear enough.
My mother had gone fifty-fifty with his father and never spent a cent on him, so what claim did she have on the estate?
My hand tightened on my fork until the knuckles went white.
"What did you just say?"
"Nothing." He smiled again. "Drink with me, Alex."
He held the glass in front of my face.
My eyes locked onto the glass of red wine.
The wine's surface trembled just a bit.
I wanted to throw it at him.
But I didn't.
I picked up my glass and touched it to his.
Then I tipped my head back and drank it down.
The wine was harsh.
It scraped all the way down and left something bitter sitting in my chest.
I called my mom on the way home.
"Mom, you were right. I went to check it out."
"What did you see?" she asked.
"They're jumping pretty high."
"Mm." Her voice was level. "Let them jump.
"The higher they jump, the harder the landing."
She hung up on that line.
The second the call ended, it hit me that my mom probably wasn't enduring anything.
She was waiting.
I had no idea what for.