“You okay, Mom?” Jason asked.
“Just a little tired,” she said quickly.
Amber was already on her phone.
Jason glanced at his wife, then at his mother, then shrugged and opened the menu.
I opened mine too, though I knew I would order something small. Kathy would do the same. We always did. A salad. A soup. Water if the drinks cost too much.
Amber flipped through the pages with confidence.
“Oh my God, they have oysters,” she said. “Babe, we have to get the oysters.”
“Sure,” Jason said, not looking up.
“And the lobster tail. It’s market price, but whatever. Special occasion.”
Under the table, Kathy’s hand found mine. Her fingers were cold and trembling.
The waiter appeared. His name tag read Tyler.
“Good evening. Can I start you with drinks?”
“Bottle of the Casis,” Amber said immediately. “The 2019.”
The waiter nodded and left.
Jason leaned back, scrolling on his phone. Neither of them had looked at Kathy in 5 minutes.
When Tyler returned, Amber ordered oysters Rockefeller and lobster tail. Jason ordered tuna tartare and a Wagyu ribeye. When Tyler turned to Kathy, she scanned the prices so quickly and fearfully that I could almost hear her calculating.
“The French onion soup, please,” she said softly.
The cheapest item on the menu.
“And you, sir?”
“House salad,” I said.
Amber did not even glance up as Tyler collected the menus.
The wine arrived. Amber swirled it, sipped it, and nodded approval. One bottle cost more than our electric bill.
I looked across the table at my son’s expensive watch, his tailored suit, his thousand-dollar phone, and I thought about March 2008.
My parents had died 3 weeks earlier in an accident on I-10. A semi ran a red light, and 2 lives that had lasted more than 70 years ended in an instant. Their estate came through faster than grief did. The house sold. The savings were liquidated. Life insurance paid out. When the attorney handed me the final number, I stared at it for a full minute.
$2 million.
Kathy and I sat at our kitchen table that night with Jason across from us, 30 years old, fresh out of business school, full of plans.
“What are we going to do with it?” Kathy asked.
I looked at my son.
“We’re going to give it to Jason,” I said.
Kathy’s eyes widened.
“All of it?”
“All of it.”
Jason had looked stunned.
“Dad, you don’t have to.”
“Yes, I do.”
I slid the papers across the table.
“Your grandparents worked their whole lives to leave something behind. They’d want you to have opportunities we never had.”
“What about you?” he asked. “What about Mom? You could retire.”
“We’re fine,” I said. “We’ve got my pension. We’ve got the house. We don’t need fancy things. But you could start a business. Invest. Build something.”
Kathy reached over and squeezed my hand.
“Your father’s right,” she said. “This is your chance.”
The notary came the next day. I signed every cent over.
Jason had promised me, with tears in his eyes, “I’ll make you proud, Dad. I’ll build something great with this.”
I believed him.
Sixteen years later, I sat in Mo’s Ocean Club watching him scroll through his phone while his wife drank wine, ate oysters, and ignored the woman who had given him everything.
Then Amber set down her fork and reached for her purse.
Her whole demeanor changed. The bored, scrolling routine disappeared. She became theatrical, warm in a way that made my skin crawl.
“Catherine,” she said, turning toward Kathy. “Jason and I have some news.”
Kathy looked up, hopeful.
Amber glanced at Jason, who finally set his phone down and nodded.
Then she turned her screen toward us.
“We’re pregnant,” Amber announced. “Fourteen weeks.”
The image on the phone was black and white, grainy, the kind of picture you see in a doctor’s office: a tiny curved shape floating in gray. The date stamp was from 6 weeks earlier.
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