She reached over and squeezed my hand.
“What’s true is that you own a beach house and Kyle’s boat has a flat tire.”
I laughed.
First real laugh in a while.
Two weeks later, the first domino fell.
Kyle got a certified letter from his lender.
He was 90 days delinquent.
They were beginning foreclosure proceedings on the house my parents had bought him.
The house he borrowed against.
The house my dad had co-signed for.
Kyle called my parents.
My parents called each other.
My mom called Aunt Linda.
Aunt Linda called me.
“It’s happening,” she said. “Kyle’s losing the house.”
I sat on my back porch, looked at the sunset over my beat-up duplex, and said, “Yeah, I figured it would.”
The next morning, my phone buzzed at 7:15.
It was Kyle.
I stared at the screen for a few seconds before I picked up.
“Tyler,” he said.
And then he said something I’d never heard him say before.
But that part needs its own space.
Kyle said, “I need help.”
Chapter 8: Mentoring Through Crisis
Not, “Can you lend me money?”
Not, “Can you talk to Mom and Dad for me?”
Just three words, and they sounded like they’d been dragged out of him with a chain.
I sat down on the edge of my bed.
Marissa looked up from her book.
I held up a finger. One second.
And said, “Okay, tell me what’s going on.”
And he did.
For the first time in maybe our entire adult lives, Kyle talked to me without performing.
No bravado.
No “It’s all good.”
He told me everything.
The refinance, the credit card debt, the missed payments, the foreclosure notice, the boat he still owed $14,000 on that he hadn’t used in two years.
He told me that Mom and Dad had bailed him out three separate times and that Dad had co-signed the refinance, which meant if the house went into foreclosure, it was going to crater Dad’s credit and potentially expose him to a deficiency judgment.
“I didn’t know it would get this bad,” Kyle said.
His voice cracked on the last word.
Not in a dramatic way.
Just tired.
I let him finish.
Then I said, “What do you want from me, Kyle?”
“I don’t want money. I mean, I can’t ask you for money again. I want to know how you did it. The duplex thing. You’ve had that building for ten years, and you’ve never once seemed stressed about money. How?”
This was the conversation I’d imagined a hundred times but never thought would actually happen.
And now that it was here, I didn’t feel satisfaction or vindication.
I just felt tired, too.
“It’s not complicated,” I said. “I bought a place that made money every month instead of costing money every month. Then I bought another one, then another. I kept my expenses low and reinvested everything.”
“How many do you have?”
I paused.
“Six buildings. Fifteen units.”
Dead silence.
“Fifteen units?” he repeated.
“Yeah.”
“Tyler, what the heck? You never asked.”
He made a sound that was almost a laugh.
Almost not.