The house sold in eleven days to a young couple named Daniel and Priya Okafor, who were expecting their first baby in September. They offered $272,500, above the asking price. Their inspector found nothing serious.
At the final walkthrough, Priya stood in the backyard and looked at the empty garden bed by the fence.
“Did someone used to grow vegetables here?” she asked.
“Our dad,” Travis said. “Tomatoes. Every summer.”
“Oh, I love that,” she said. “I’m going to grow tomatoes.”
Travis and I looked at each other. Neither of us trusted our voice.
The closing was on a Wednesday in late June at a title company in Westerville. Travis wore a tie. I’d never seen him in one outside a funeral.
The closing attorney, a brisk woman named Ms. Abernathy, walked us through the settlement statement line by line. I read every number, because I always do. The real estate commission was $16,350. Closing costs and the transfer tax came to about $3,100. After that, the net proceeds came to $253,050.
Then came the credits. From Travis’s half, I received $2,768.19 for his share of the property taxes and insurance, plus the $5,000 we’d agreed on for the overpaid expenses. Ms. Abernathy wrote it all down exactly the way Howard and I had negotiated.
When it was done, my share came to $134,293.19. Travis’s came to $118,756.81.
Travis looked at the number for a long time.
“I’ve never had this much money in my life,” he said quietly.
“Don’t spend it all on beer pong,” I said.
He laughed, a real laugh, the first one I’d heard from him in months.
Before we left, Ms. Abernathy slid two keys across the table toward the buyers. Daniel Okafor picked them up and held them in his palm, exactly the way I’d held the keys to my studio apartment eight months earlier.
In the parking lot afterward, Travis stopped me beside my car.
“I want to tell you what I’m doing with the money,” he said. “Not because you have to approve it. I just want somebody to know. So I can’t back out.”
“Okay.”
“I paid off the collections already. Both of them. Yesterday. I called the companies myself.” He pulled a folded piece of paper out of his pocket. “I’m putting twenty thousand into a savings account I can’t touch for emergencies. I signed up for a credit counseling program through a nonprofit in Columbus. And I’m going back to finish my continuing education hours to get my real estate license reactivated. For real this time.”
He unfolded the paper and showed me. It was a budget. A real budget, handwritten, in columns. Rent. Utilities. Groceries. Car insurance. Savings.
At the top, he’d written: TRAVIS — THINGS HE’S GOING TO DO.
I looked at it for a long time.
“Dad would like that,” I said.
“Yeah.” He folded it carefully and put it back in his pocket. “I hope so.”
I put most of my share into a high-yield savings account and an index fund, the way Dad would have wanted. Slow and steady. No flash.
Then, in August, I used $48,000 of it as a down payment on a two-bedroom townhouse in Grandview, four blocks from my studio. The deed was recorded in my name alone. I read every page at the closing and initialed each one.
