Chapter 4
The next three years were the most miserable of my life.
David and Linda sat on those twenty-five properties like leeches and drained every dollar they could.
The seven rentals brought in forty thousand dollars a month.
They saved none of it and spent all of it.
Spending all of it wasn't enough, either.
David mortgaged three of the properties and pulled four million dollars out of the bank.
He bought cars, watches, and handbags.
Linda was flying somewhere overseas every few weeks, and her Instagram was nothing but first-class seats and duty-free hauls.
And me?
I was a middle manager at a tech company in Brighton.
I made 9,300 dollars a month, and after taxes, benefits, and my mortgage I took home under 6,700.
I lived in a 650-square-foot one-bedroom in Southside District with twenty-three years left on the loan.
Every month I sent my mom 1,700 dollars for living expenses.
She never asked for it.
But I knew her pension came to a little over 1,000 dollars.
Thirty years of teaching math as an associate professor, and her retirement check was barely over 1,000 dollars.
That number got to me every time I thought about it.
What got to me more was that she'd managed her own salary the entire time my dad was alive.
They split everything fifty-fifty.
She never touched his money and he never touched hers.
It sounded fair.
But it didn't hold up under a second look.
My dad made more than five times what my mom did.
He ran a business and bought twenty-five properties.
She taught school and saved her paycheck for forty-six years.
Under the same arrangement, my dad kept getting richer and my mom kept getting thriftier.
I hated it.
I hated all of it.
But my mom acted like none of it touched her.
In three years, she never said David's name once.
Her days went by without a ripple.
She got up early for yoga, went to the market in the morning, read in the afternoon, and watched her shows at night.
I did start noticing small things, though.
The first thing was a new phone.
I hadn't bought it for her.
She said she'd bought it herself, that the old one was due to go.
It was a top-of-the-line iPhone 15 Pro Max.
A woman with a little over 1,000 dollars a month coming in was carrying a phone that cost more than 2,000.
"Mom, that phone isn't cheap."
"It was on sale."
On sale or not, it wasn't cheap.
The second thing was that she went out a lot.
Not market trips.
She'd get properly dressed, pick up a black briefcase, and leave.
Sometimes she was gone the whole day.
She came back with a particular look on her face.
It wasn't tiredness.
It was satisfaction.
It was the look of somebody who had just finished something big.
"Mom, where were you?"
"Having coffee with old classmates."
"With a briefcase?"
"For the coffee beans."
I totally believed her.
I really did, back then.
The third thing was that she started subscribing to newspapers.
Not the local evening or morning paper.
She got The Financial Observer, Business Daily, and Securities Journal.
They were stacked neatly on her nightstand, with sections marked up in red pen.
"Mom, what are you reading these for?"
"Learning. Nobody's ever too old for it."
"You're studying the market?"
"Why not?" She pushed her reading glasses up. "Your mother got a perfect score on the math SAT. This is easy by comparison."
I laughed.
I figured she was bored in retirement and looking for something to do.
I didn't think much of it.
Looking back, I was an idiot.
David and I barely crossed paths in those three years.
There was one exception.
It happened last Christmas.
I'd gone home to spend the holiday with my mom.
The day after Christmas I went to the supermarket for groceries.
I ran into David in the parking lot.
He climbed out of a Porsche Cayenne with a well-dressed young woman on his arm.
It wasn't Linda.
He stalled for a second when he saw me, then put on that signature grin.
"Alex, Merry Christmas!"
I ignored him.
He didn't mind. He came over and pulled a stack of cash envelopes out of his pocket.
"Here, Alex, take one." He pressed an envelope into my hand. "It's the holidays. Call it luck."
I looked down at it.
The envelope was red with a big gold snowflake stamped on the front.
It was thick with bills.
"Don't be like that, Alex." He patted my shoulder. "If money ever gets tight, say the word. Different mothers, sure, but we're still brothers."
His mouth curled higher on the words different mothers.
I stared him down for five seconds.
Then I put the envelope back in his hand.
"Keep it."
"Come on, Alex, don't be a stranger."
"I said keep it."
I turned and walked away.
Five steps out, he called after me.
"Alex, how's your mom doing? Living by herself, she really ought to watch her health."
David sounded genuinely concerned.
The concern put a chill down my back.
I didn't turn around.
I opened the envelope once I got in the car.
Two hundred dollars.
A man sitting on twenty-five properties had handed me 200 dollars.
It was ridiculous.
I threw the envelope onto the passenger seat.
Then I leaned over the wheel and closed my eyes for a while.
When I got home that day, I told my mom about it.
She was making cookies.
Her rolling pin never stopped while she listened.
"Two hundred?" she asked.
"Two hundred," I replied.
"That's not bad." She nodded. "More generous than your father. He never put more than sixty-five in an envelope for his own brothers at Christmas."
"Mom—"
"Enough. Come here and roll these out. Yours always come out thick in the middle and thin at the edges."
"Mom, I'm being serious."
"Rolling dough is serious."
She sat me down at the table and put me to work.
I rolled and sulked at the same time.
She shaped cookies beside me, fast and even, every one of them round and neat, all lined up in rows.
Then she said something.
"Alex, do you trust me?"
My hands stopped.
"I trust you."
"Then don't be in a hurry."
She set a finished cookie on the tray.
"What's coming will come."
What was coming did come.
It wasn't good news.
It was Monday, March 17th.
I was in a meeting at the office at two in the afternoon.
My phone buzzed three times.
I ignored it.
On the fourth buzz I pulled it out and looked.
It was May Haden, my mom's neighbor.
My heart skipped a beat.
"Hello?" I answered.