I tightened everything. No streaming services. No eating out. I counted grocery items like they were ammunition. Rice, beans, eggs. I learned which pain days I could skip the medication and which ones I couldn’t. And I healed slowly, methodically, the way the military teaches you to do everything: one controlled movement at a time.
Physical therapy became my anchor. The room always smelled faintly of disinfectant and rubber mats. My therapist, an older man with a quiet voice and steady hands, never rushed me. “You don’t need to prove anything here,” he told me once as I struggled through a set of balance drills. “Your body is not your enemy.”
I wanted to believe him.
Between sessions, I met with my lawyer. His office overlooked the city—all glass and steel and quiet confidence. He never raised his voice, never over-promised. He just asked precise questions and waited for precise answers.
Three days after my first visit, he slid a thick folder across his desk. “This,” he said, “is the story your parents tell themselves.”
I opened it. The myth unraveled fast. The house I’d grown up in—the one my mother liked to call their “nest egg”—was leveraged to the edge. Refinanced more times than I could count. Three months behind on payments. Final notices buried under unopened mail.
The boat? Not paid for. Not even close. The down payment alone sat on a credit card with a brutal interest rate. The rest was financed through a loan that assumed future income that didn’t exist.
My sister’s business? Bleeding cash. Payroll covered by pulling equity out of the house. Taxes? Complicated in a way that made my lawyer’s mouth tighten.
“They’re not wealthy,” he said calmly. “They’re pretending.”
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