Chapter 5 - When the Pillars Crumble
By Thursday of that week, the reality of Thomas's decision began to hit the house in Cherry Creek like a slow-moving landslide.
The first sign was the car.
At 10:00 a.m., a flatbed tow truck pulled up to the curb in front of the brick house. Two men in grease-stained jumpsuits got out, hooked up the silver sedan Robert loved so much, and began to winch it onto the bed.
Robert had run out onto the porch, his face pale, waving his cane. "What are you doing? That is my car! I am Robert Montgomery!"
"Lease was terminated by the primary holder, sir," the driver said, not even looking up from his clipboard. "Thomas Montgomery. We're just doing our job."
Within twenty minutes, the car was gone, leaving nothing but a clean patch of concrete in the driveway where it had sat for three years.
The second sign was the air conditioning.
The Denver summer was brutal that week, with temperatures climbing toward ninety-five degrees. On Friday afternoon, the high-efficiency unit at the side of the house groaned, sputtered, and died.
Helen called the HVAC company she had used for years. "The unit is off," she said imperiously. "Send someone out immediately."
"Of course, Mrs. Montgomery," the dispatcher said. "We see the account is under Thomas Montgomery's business name. We'll just need a credit card on file to authorize the emergency diagnostic fee of two hundred and fifty dollars."
"Just bill it to Thomas’s account as usual," Helen said.
"I’m sorry, ma'am," the dispatcher replied after a brief pause. "But Mr. Montgomery called us on Tuesday morning and removed his credit card from this account. He noted that any future service at your address must be paid for upfront by the resident."
Helen sat in her hot, sticky kitchen, the phone still in her hand, listening to the dial tone. The air in the house was already growing heavy, warm, and stagnant.
For forty years, Helen and Robert had lived on the assumption that their status was a natural law of the universe. They were the Montgomerys. They were respectable. They went to the first service on Sunday, sat in the third row, and contributed to the building fund.
They had never stopped to think that the building fund donations came from the profit margins of The Daily Bread. They had never stopped to think that their beautiful lawn was mowed by a landscaping service paid for by Thomas's catering company.
Now, the pillars of their temple were crumbling, not from a great storm, but because the man holding them up had simply walked away.
That evening, Robert sat at the dining table, his ledger book open in front of him. His hands were shaking. He had been a bookkeeper forty years ago, before he retired early due to "bad knees" and a general dislike of taking orders from younger men. He knew how to read numbers.
And the numbers were terrifying.
Their pension was small—barely twelve hundred dollars a month. Their social security added another fifteen hundred. Together, they had twenty-seven hundred dollars a month to live on.
The mortgage on the Cherry Creek house was thirty-two hundred.
The math was simple, brutal, and completely unforgiving. They were five hundred dollars short of the mortgage payment alone, with nothing left for food, medicine, utilities, or the insurance on a car they no longer owned.
"Call him," Robert whispered, his voice sounding old and thin in the hot room.
"I will not," Helen said, her jaw set, though sweat was beaded on her forehead. "He is our son. He will crawl back. He always does. He has a soft heart. He's weak, Robert. He’s always been weak. That’s why he let those women walk all over him."
"Helen, look at the paper," Robert said, pushing the ledger toward her. "The bank payment is due on the first of the month. That is ten days from now. If we don't pay, they will send a notice. Within ninety days, we will be on the street."
"We have Clara," Helen said, clutching her pearls. "Clara is a successful woman. Her husband is a partner at a firm."
"Clara called me from the airport yesterday," Robert said. "She went back to Chicago. She said she... she cannot help us right now. She said their investments are tied up in a new condominium project."
Helen went quiet. The silence in the hot house was deafening. The only sound was the distant hum of traffic on the interstate and the ticking of the grandfather clock in the hallway—a clock Thomas had bought her for their forty-fifth anniversary.
May you like
"He won't let us starve," Helen said, though her voice lacked its usual certainty. "He's our son."
"We treated his children like servants, Helen," Robert said. He looked down at his liver-spotted hands. For the first time, a small, cold shadow of regret seemed to pass over his face. "In front of everyone. We did it to show him he wasn't in charge. But... he was in charge. He’s always been in charge."
