THEY SERVED YOU DOG FOOD AT YOUR OWN 70TH BIRTHDAY—SO YOU CANCELED THE CARDS AND EXPOSED THE SECRET YOUR SON AND HIS GIRLFRIEND WERE HIDING

THEY SERVED YOU DOG FOOD AT YOUR OWN 70TH BIRTHDAY—SO YOU CANCELED THE CARDS AND EXPOSED THE SECRET YOUR SON AND HIS GIRLFRIEND WERE HIDING
You sit alone in your bedroom while laughter shakes the ceiling below.

The house smells like mole, rice, warm tortillas, and betrayal. The food you paid for is being eaten by people who watched your own son put dog kibble in front of you and call it a joke. Your seventy-year-old hands rest on the keyboard, still steady, still trained by forty years of accounting books, tax records, payroll sheets, and numbers that never lied unless people forced them to.

So you start adding.

Rent not paid for four years.

Electricity.

Water.

Gas.

Groceries.

Cell phone bills.

Car insurance.

Credit card charges Luis promised were “temporary.”

Cash withdrawals he said were for job interviews.