Rating: ★★★★☆ Tags: Mystery Detective, General, Fiction

You are turning me into
what I never have been and never wanted to be, a nag,
because you are not living up to your end of a very basic
compact. Don’t do that, it’s not okay to do
.
I know, I know, I 
know
that losing a job is incredibly
stressful, and particularly for a man, they say it can be like a
death in the family, and especially for a man like Nick, who
has always worked, so I take a giant breath, roll my anger
up into a red rubber ball, and mentally kick it out into space.
‘Well, do you mind if I hang these up? Just so they stay nice
for you?’
‘Knock yourself out.’
His-and-her layoffs, isn’t that sweet? I know we are
luckier than most: I go online and check my trust fund
whenever I get nervous. I never called it a trust fund before

---

Nick did; it’s actually not that grand. I mean, it’s nice, it’s
great – $785,404 that I have in savings thanks to my
parents. But it’s not the kind of money that allows you to
stop working forever, especially not in New York. My
parents’ whole point was to make me feel secure enough
so I didn’t need to make choices based on money – in
schooling, in career – but not so well off that I could be
tempted to check out. Nick makes fun, but I think it’s a great
gesture for parents to make. (And appropriate, considering
they plagiarized my childhood for the books.)
But I’m still feeling sick about the layoff, 
our layoffs
,
when my dad calls and asks if he and Mom can stop by.
They need to talk with us. This afternoon, now, actually, if
it’s okay. Of course it’s okay, I say, and in my head, I think,
Cancer cancer cancer
.
My parents appear at the door, looking like they’ve put
up an effort. My father is thoroughly pressed and tucked
and shined, impeccable except for the grooves beneath his
eyes. My mother is in one of her bright purple dresses that
she always wore to speeches and ceremonies, back when
she got those invitations. She says the color demands
confidence of the wearer.
They look great, but they seem ashamed. I usher them
to the sofa, and we all sit silently for a second.
‘Kids, your mother and I, we seem to have—’ my father
finally starts, then stops to cough. He places his hands on
his knees; his big knuckles pale. ‘Well, we seem to have
gotten ourselves into a hell of a financial mess.’
I don’t know what my reaction is supposed to be:
shocked, consoling, disappointed? My parents have never
confessed any troubles to me. I don’t think they’ve had

---

many troubles.
‘The fact of the matter is, we’ve been irresponsible,’
Marybeth continues. ‘We’ve been living the past decade
like we were making the same kind of money we did for the
previous two decades, and we weren’t. We haven’t made
half that, but we were in denial. We were … 
optimistic
may
be a kind way to put it. We just kept thinking the next 
Amy
book would do the trick. But that hasn’t happened. And we
kept making bad decisions. We invested foolishly. We
spent foolishly. And now.’
‘We’re basically broke,’ Rand says. ‘Our house, as
well as 
this
house, it’s all underwater.’
I’d thought – assumed – they’d bought this house for us
outright. I had no idea they were making payments on it. I
feel a sting of embarrassment that I am as sheltered as
Nick says.
‘Like I said, we made some serious judgment errors,’
Marybeth says. ‘We should write a book: 
Amazing Amy
and the Adjustable Rate Mortgage
. We would flunk every
quiz. We’d be the cautionary tale. Amy’s friend, Wendy
Want It Now.’
‘Harry Head in the Sand,’ Rand adds.
‘So what happens next?’ I ask.
‘That is entirely up to you,’ my dad says. My mom
fishes out a homemade pamphlet from her purse and sets
it on the table in front of us – bars and graphs and pie
charts created on their home computer. It kills me to picture
my parents squinting over the user’s manual, trying to make
their proposition look pretty for me.
Marybeth starts the pitch: ‘We wanted to ask if we
could borrow some money from your trust while we figure

---

out what to do with the rest of our lives.’
My parents sit in front of us like two eager college kids
hoping for their first internship. My father’s knee jiggles until
my mother places a gentle fingertip on it.
‘Well, the trust fund is your money, so of course you
can borrow from it,’ I say. I just want this to be over; the
hopeful look on my parents’ faces, I can’t stand it. ‘How
much do you think you need, to pay everything off and feel
comfortable for a while?’
My father looks at his shoes. My mother takes a deep
breath. ‘Six hundred and fifty thousand,’ she says.
‘Oh.’ It is all I can say. It is almost everything we have.
‘Amy, maybe you and I should discuss—’ Nick begins.
‘No, no, we can do this,’ I say. ‘I’ll just go grab my
checkbook.’
‘Actually,’ Marybeth says, ‘if you could wire it to our
account tomorrow, that would be best. Otherwise there’s a
ten-day waiting period.’
That’s when I know they are in serious trouble.

---