…put your house up as collateral for their business line of credit.”
The accountant, Mr. Hughes, showed me the application. My house. My signature, or something that looked like it. A line of credit for two hundred thousand dollars.
“I refused to file it,” he said. “I told your son I wouldn’t submit anything without speaking to you in person. He hired a different accountant the next week. I’ve been worried ever since.”
The bank hadn’t approved the application yet. Mr. Hughes helped me write a letter that afternoon, stating that I had never agreed to use my house as collateral. The bank cancelled it the same day.
Then I stopped the $2,000 monthly transfer. I didn’t announce it. I just let the first of the month come and go.
My son called on the third. “Mom, did something happen with the payment?” I told him nothing had happened. I’d simply decided to stop paying credit cards for a family with a forty-thousand-dollar bonus.
There was a long silence. Then he said, “How did you find out?”
“Your wife sent me her plan,” I said. “Next time, she should check who she’s texting.”
They hosted Christmas after all. I didn’t go. I booked the vacation I’d cancelled: two weeks in Portugal with my sister. We drank coffee on a balcony overlooking the ocean on Christmas morning.
My son apologized in February. He paid back part of what I’d given them. We’re civil now. I see my grandchildren every other weekend. And I check every single document twice.
