I signed the closing documents in David’s conference room with a pair of Leo’s tiny knitted baby socks tucked inside my handbag. Maya had made them for him, and I’d been carrying them around like a good luck charm.
Then David drew up a lease. Richard and Patricia Barrett would rent the house from Hollis Lane Holdings LLC for $2,400 a month, a generous rate. Comparable houses in that neighborhood rented for at least $5,500. The lease ran year to year, renewing automatically each fall.
My parents signed it at the kitchen table in that same house, never knowing who the owner was. The property manager David hired handled everything, so they never saw my name.
They called it “a brilliant restructuring.” At the country club, my mother told everyone that Richard had “worked out a creative arrangement with an investor” that let them stay in their home.
I let them.
The rent never came close to covering the costs. Every month, the mortgage payment was $2,780. Property taxes came to $17,400 a year, about $1,450 a month. Insurance was $230 a month. So it cost about $4,460 a month to carry the house. My parents paid $2,400.
I covered the other $2,060, every single month, for four years.
When the roof started leaking two winters later, I paid $19,500 to replace it. When the furnace died last January, I paid $8,200 for a new one. I listened while my mother told her friends at the club about Richard’s “financial instincts.”
Four years of quiet work kept their home standing.
I told myself I was doing it because they were my parents, and that was true.
But another truth was harder to admit. I still hoped that someday they would look at Leo and see the little boy I saw. Funny, gentle, curious Leo, who said “please” and “thank you” without being reminded and gave the best hugs in the world.
