Chapter 3
I should have ended the call immediately.
Instead, curiosity won.
“What favor?”
Trevor exhaled.
“I need help with something.”
“That cleared everything up.”
“Can you not do this right now?”
I stared at my computer screen.
“You called me.”
“I know.”
“So say what you want.”
Silence.
Then he said,
“I need money.”
I leaned back slowly.
Of course.
“How much?”
“Seven thousand.”
I almost laughed.
“For what?”
“My truck.”
That truck.
The same truck my parents bought while telling me college was too expensive.
“What happened to it?”
“Payments.”
I frowned.
“Mom and Dad bought it.”
“They paid the down payment.”
That was new information.
Trevor continued.
“I refinanced later.”
“Why?”
“I needed cash.”
“For what?”
“Things.”
“What things?”
He became irritated.
“Why does it matter?”
“Because you’re asking me for seven thousand dollars.”
He went quiet.
Then he muttered,
“I lost money.”
“How?”
Another silence.
“Sports betting.”
I closed my eyes.
“So let me understand.”
“Paige.”
“You made fun of my accounting degree.”
“I said I was joking.”
“And now you need the accountant to fix your gambling debt.”
“It’s not like that.”
“It sounds exactly like that.”
His tone sharpened.
“You don’t have to be smug.”
“I’m not smug.”
I was honestly amazed.
“You called me after months of silence because you need money.”
“I thought family helped family.”
There it was again.
Family.
The emergency word people used when boundaries became inconvenient.
“I’m not giving you seven thousand dollars.”
“You own a house.”
“That doesn’t mean I have seven thousand dollars to throw away.”
“You just got promoted.”
I froze.
“How do you know?”
He stopped talking.
That answer told me everything.
“Who told you?”
“No one.”
“Trevor.”
“Mom heard from someone.”
I frowned.
I had told exactly three people.
Riley.
Professor Hart.
Natalie.
None of them knew my mother.
Then I remembered.
LinkedIn.
My company had posted the promotion.
I almost laughed at the absurdity.
My family ignored my accomplishments when I offered them freely.
Now they were searching for information because they wanted access.
“I still said no.”
Trevor sighed.
“Mom and Dad can’t help.”
“Why?”
“They’ve got expenses.”
“What expenses?”
“That’s not your business.”
“Then neither are yours.”
He cursed.
I hung up.
That evening, Mom appeared at my house.
This time she did not cry.
She was angry.
“You refused your brother?”
I stayed inside behind the screen door.
“Yes.”
“He could lose his truck.”
“That sounds unfortunate.”
“Paige.”
“What?”
“You have money.”
“You don’t know what I have.”
“You bought this house.”
“With a mortgage.”
“You got promoted.”
“Why are you monitoring my job?”
Her expression changed.
“We’re proud of you.”
I actually laughed.
Mom looked offended.
“What’s funny?”
“You missed graduation because you didn’t think I would finish.”
“That was a mistake.”
“You mocked my job.”
“I didn’t mock your job.”
“You called it a little office job.”
She looked away.
Then she said,
“Trevor needs help.”
“And?”
“You’re doing well.”
“So?”
“He’s your brother.”
I opened the screen door but stayed in the doorway.
“When I needed tuition, what did you tell me?”
Mom frowned.
“That was different.”
“What did you tell me?”
She knew.
I waited.
Finally, she muttered,
“You needed to learn independence.”
I nodded.
“Great advice.”
Her face tightened.
“Don’t twist my words.”
“I’m not.”
I smiled slightly.
“I think Trevor should learn independence.”
“That’s cruel.”
I stared at her.
There it was.
When hardship happened to me, it built character.
When it happened to Trevor, it was cruelty.
“Mom, go home.”
She stepped closer.
“Your brother is struggling.”
“So did I.”
“You were always good at figuring things out.”
The words stunned me.
Not because they were mean.
Because she meant them as praise.
“You hear yourself?”
“What?”
“You think because I survived without help, I never deserved help.”
“That’s not what I said.”
“It’s exactly what you said.”
Her eyes filled.
“I don’t know how we got here.”
I almost softened.
Almost.
Then I remembered she had come to demand money.
Not apologize.
“Neither do I.”
That night, I received an email from Trevor.
It wasn’t an apology.
It was an invoice.
Seven thousand dollars.
Subject line:
Since you’re doing so well.
I stared at it.
Then forwarded it to Riley.
Her response came instantly.
PLEASE TELL ME HE DID NOT SEND YOU AN INVOICE FOR HIS GAMBLING DEBT.
He had.
I blocked that email address too.
Two weeks passed.
Then Dad called my office.
I had forgotten he knew the company name.
Reception transferred him before I could stop it.
“Paige.”
I lowered my voice.
“Why are you calling me at work?”
“Because you’ve blocked everyone.”
“That was intentional.”
“We need to talk.”
“No.”
“Trevor’s in trouble.”
“Then Trevor needs to solve it.”
Dad exhaled angrily.
“You’ve become incredibly selfish.”
I looked around the office.
People were working ten feet away.
“Do not call me here again.”
“We raised you better than this.”
Something in me snapped.
Quietly.
“You raised me to solve my own problems.”
I paused.
“So congratulations. It worked.”
I hung up.
I told reception not to transfer personal calls from my family.
Then I sat at my desk shaking.
Natalie noticed.
She invited me into her office.
I apologized.
“For what?”
“Family drama.”
“Is it affecting your work?”
“No.”
“Then stop apologizing.”
I looked at her.
She leaned back.
“My mother once called my first boss because she thought I was working too much.”
I laughed.
“You’re joking.”
“No.”
“Was she right?”
“Absolutely.”
That made me smile.
Then Natalie became serious.
“Success changes family dynamics sometimes.”
“I don’t think success changed mine.”
“What did?”
“It made me stop needing their approval.”
She nodded.
“That will do it.”
Three months later, Trevor lost the truck.
He blamed me.
Mom blamed me.
Dad said I could have prevented it.
I felt guilty for one evening.
Then I looked at my mortgage statement.
My student-loan history.
My old spreadsheets where I once budgeted sixteen dollars for food until payday.
Nobody had rescued me.
I survived.
Trevor could too.
Then something unexpected happened.
Aunt Melissa invited me to lunch.
I almost declined.
But she had stopped carrying messages after our first conversation.
So I went.
Halfway through lunch, she slid a folder toward me.
“What is this?”
“Something you should see.”
I opened it.
Inside were bank statements.
My parents’ names were on top.
I looked at her.
“Why do you have these?”
“Your father asked me for money.”
My stomach tightened.
“How much?”
“Twenty thousand.”
“What?”
Melissa leaned closer.
“They’re in serious financial trouble.”
I stared at the statements.
Credit cards.
Loans.
Missed payments.
Then one transfer caught my attention.
Twenty-five thousand dollars.
Sent to Trevor.
Six months earlier.
The same month they told him they could not help with his gambling debt.
I looked at Melissa.
“They lied.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
She hesitated.
“Because they didn’t want you to know they had already bailed him out once.”
My chest went cold.
Then she turned to the final page.
There was another transfer.
Forty thousand dollars.
Three years earlier.
Memo:
Trevor business venture.
I stared at it.
Three years earlier.
That was the exact year I had asked Dad for help paying my final tuition balance.
Three thousand eight hundred dollars.
He had told me they had nothing.
I looked up.
Melissa’s eyes were wet.
“I thought you deserved to know.”
I closed the folder.
For years, I had believed my parents favored Trevor emotionally.
Now I knew something worse.
May you like
They had funded his failures with money they denied me when I was succeeding.
And for the first time, I wondered just how much of my childhood had been built around the same lie.
