My name is Margaret Holloway. Most people call me Peggy. I am sixty-eight years old, and I spent forty-one of those years as a senior accountant at a midsize financial firm in Columbus, Ohio.
I retired three years ago with a pension, a modest investment portfolio, and a salary history that peaked at $130,000 a year. I lived in the same house for thirty-two years, a cream-colored colonial on Birwood Lane with a garden my late husband Gerald planted the spring before his heart gave out. I had a good life.
A quiet life. The kind you build brick by brick without anyone noticing until it’s done. My son Derek is forty-three.
He works in sales, medical equipment, the kind of job where the money is good when the quarters are good and miserable when they aren’t. He married Stacy seventeen years ago. Stacy is the kind of woman who smiles with her teeth and watches you with her eyes.
I noticed that at the wedding and told myself I was being an old fool. Gerald liked her. Gerald liked everyone.
After Gerald died, Derek started coming around more. At first it felt like love. He called twice a week.
He took me to dinner on Sundays. He helped with the gutters in October. I felt less alone, and I was grateful.
A widow’s gratitude is a powerful thing. It can blind you to a great deal. The first request came eight months after the funeral.
Derek said he and Stacy were a little short, a slow quarter, nothing serious. Could I lend them $4,000 for the mortgage? I wrote the check that same afternoon.
He was my son. Gerald would have done the same. Then a second request.
Then a third. Then a pattern so regular I should have seen it as a system rather than a series of emergencies. A car repair.
Private school tuition. A medical bill. A legal fee.
A home repair that couldn’t wait. Over the course of two and a half years, I gave Derek $78,000. I counted it later, sitting at my kitchen table with a legal pad and a cup of cold coffee.
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