Chapter 1

1: 1

Three years posted overseas, all to keep the family fed.

My salary was eight thousand a month, and I wired six of it to my wife every month so she could take care of my parents.

Instead, my parents starved until their stomachs ruptured and they ended up in the ER.

I flew home overnight and pulled my wife Vera Dickerson's bank records.

Then I froze where I stood.

Line after line after line, every transfer went to Joachim Kellerman, her old flame.

And every month, all my parents got was thirty dollars in living money.

I called her. She didn't pick up.

She only called back, slow about it, once my parents were out of surgery.

"Hey, honey, I'm helping Joachim find a venue for his art show. I'm about to sign the contract."

"Oh, right, I've been swamped helping him get the show ready over at his place, so I can't come welcome you home. Whatever it is, it'll have to wait. Bye."

Wait?

There was no later for us.

...

"What were you thinking? Two elderly people, and you send them two hundred a month? People on welfare get more than that!"

The doctor couldn't hold it in, laying into me right there in the hospital room.

My mother lifted a trembling hand and dug a wad of crumpled bills out of her pocket.

"Doctor, my son's having a hard time."

"Silly boy. Cheated out of all that money overseas, in debt, can't even keep yourself fed, and you're still thinking about sending us living money. It breaks my heart."

"We saved up the money you sent, and your father and I earned a little too. It's not much, but it's enough to get by on. Take it first."

My father coughed and chimed in.

"Vera was afraid you'd take it hard, being alone overseas, so she kept telling us not to say anything to you. That's you all over, boy, never letting your parents worry, carrying everything yourself since you were little."

I looked at the money pressed into my hand. Ones, fives, dozens of hundreds.

Crumpled, a rotten cabbage leaf stuck to it, wrapped in three layers of plastic bag.

I looked up at their faces.

Weathered eyes, skin gone slack with wrinkles, so thin they hardly looked like themselves.

Three years ago, right after I married Vera, the overseas posting came through.

Vera backed it with both hands then, even promised she'd feed my parents up plump and healthy.

Every video call, Vera would grab my parents' phone and rattle on about where they'd traveled, what tonics they'd been eating, how comfortable their lives were.

When I ran into someone from back home overseas, he said he'd seen my parents picking through trash on the street to sell it, and I laughed and told him no way, my parents were doing great.

The truth landed like a hard slap across my face.

They were scraping by on two hundred dollars that couldn't fill their stomachs, and still saving it, still picking through trash, all to "pay back" my debts.

I pulled out a bank card and pressed it into my parents' hands, forcing myself to look calm.