Chapter 4 - The Front Door Confrontation
I knew they wouldn't let it rest. Bullies never surrender their supply without a fight.
That evening, I picked Evan up from his after-school robotics club and drove him straight to my friend Marcus’s house. Marcus was my college roommate, a former collegiate wrestler who was now a high school principal and Evan’s godfather. His kids were Evan’s best friends.
"Keep him for pizza and video games tonight?" I asked Marcus on the front porch.
Marcus took one look at my face and nodded. "Family drama?"
"The bill came due," I said simply.
"Take all the time you need. Evan’s safe here."
I got back to my house at 6:15 PM.
Sure enough, parked at the curb outside my two-story brick home was Greg’s black F-250, idling with its high beams blinding the driveway. Standing near my porch were Melissa and Greg. Melissa had her arms crossed over her puffer vest, pacing back and forth across my lawn.
I pulled into the garage, closed the bay door, and walked out through the front entrance to meet them. The December evening air was biting, hovering around forty degrees.
"Where is your son?" Melissa snapped the moment she saw me. "Is he inside? He needs to hear how his father is behaving."
"If you take one step toward my house, Greg," I warned, noticing my brother-in-law stepping up onto the porch stairs, "I will have you cited for trespassing. Step down to the driveway. Now."
Greg paused. He was broad-shouldered, six-foot-two, used to throwing his weight around job sites. But he looked at my eyes and saw something he had never seen in me before: absolute indifference. He stepped down.
"Daniel, this is insane," Melissa said, her voice shaking with rage. "The bank flagged our loan. We had to scrape through our checking account and borrow fifteen hundred dollars from Mom and Dad’s retirement fund just to make the cutoff before 5:00 PM!"
"Good," I said. "Then you made the payment. Problem solved."
"Problem solved?!" she screamed. "That was Mom and Dad’s emergency money! What about next month? What about January? What about February?"
"Next month, you pay it out of your own paycheck," I said. "Or Greg pays it out of his. Between the two of you, you bring home over nine thousand dollars net every month. Why can't you afford your own mortgage?"
Greg stepped forward, his face flushed red in the cold. "Because we budgeted our life around that assistance, Daniel! We took on other obligations based on that agreement! You don't just pull the rug out from under family without a three-month warning!"
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"You called my son an outsider at Thanksgiving dinner," I countered, looking Greg dead in the eye. "Did you give him a three-month warning before you humiliated him in front of eight people?"
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