Roughly $37,000.
“I stopped that one too.”
He stared.
“I didn’t know it was that much.”
“I know.”
That was the problem.
He didn’t know much about any of it.
Then he said:
“Can we not do the boat thing right now?”
The boat.
In 2024, he had taken $4,000 from the business account to buy into a boat share with coworkers.
He told me it was bonus money.
It wasn’t.
I found the withdrawal months later and said nothing because by then the argument felt more expensive than the money.
He took the storage-unit key.
That weekend, I drove past and watched him and a cousin clear out his father’s tools.
The unit also contained a couch, mattress, file boxes, a child’s bicycle, and a Christmas tree.
His father had been dead thirteen years.
Somewhere along the way, the unit had become where the family stored things nobody wanted to deal with.
I had simply been paying for the privilege of keeping the door closed.
In October, Willadine turned seventy.
She called and asked me to come to her birthday lunch at Bob Evans.
I went.
Rolene waited until everyone had finished eating.
Then, in front of the family, she asked:
“Will you please keep Marcel at Seaggraves through June?”
Every face turned toward me.
That was when I understood she still had not told them I had paid the tuition for three years.
She was making it sound like she was asking her bitter soon-to-be former sister-in-law for a new favor.
I could have corrected the entire room with one sentence.
I could have said:
I have paid every dollar of Marcel’s tuition since 2023.
I didn’t.
I was tired of correcting them.
“No.”