“Do not start that. Mom and Dad helped you become who you are.”
“They cosigned one apartment lease when I was twenty-two. I paid every month.”
“That still counts.”
“As ownership of my lake house fourteen years later?”
He went quiet.
The silence stretched.
Then his voice changed.
It became smaller.
“Arden, I need this weekend.”
Something in my chest went cold.
“For what?”
“I told some people they could use the place.”
“Family?”
He did not answer.
“Keaton.”
“They are connected to some money I owe.”
I turned off the stove.
“How much?”
“Eighteen thousand.”
The room seemed to narrow around me. The lake outside went dark
blue under the evening sky.
My family had not just planned a free vacation.
My brother had used my house as bait in a debt I knew nothing about.
My parents had either ignored it or helped him hide it because saying yes to Keaton had always been easier than parenting him.
