My phone vibrates: it’s the new iPhone 15 Pro, the one that encapsulates my real life. It’s a message from Roman Thorne, my lawyer.
I thought you might like to know. Arthur called my office again today. Fifth time this month. He continues to threaten his Lone Star Holdings. I heard that his legal team served him with a harassment injunction. It has no legal basis. The house was yours. The sale was legal. Good evening, Skyler.
I smile, setting the phone down on the wrought iron table. I imagine Dad’s face, red and sweaty, probably calling from a cheap cell phone he managed to assemble. The irony is not lost on me.
According to my old neighbor Carol, who keeps texting me because she’s charmingly nosy, my parents rent a third-floor walk-up apartment in a run-down apartment building in East Austin. No elevator. Three flights of stairs. Daily. It turns out that the money they made selling those few bottles of Italian wine—the Brunello and Barolo they were so proud of, bought with undeserved money—only covered about three months of rent. When they ran out, they had to dip into the little savings left from Dad’s failing pension fund, the same fund they had decimated with their “businesses” and golf club memberships.
Carol told me that Arthur’s knee has gotten worse now. “All those stairs,” he said. “Kate does all the shopping, because he can’t go up more than once a day.”
I should feel guilty. I wait for that moment, that feeling of
My father forgot to hang up and I heard, “It’s so dumb that it lets us stay,” so I booked his dream trip to Italy, sold my 980,000 home
