Her brother flipped the Christmas dinner across the room because she wouldn't let him borrow her truck for his "alpaca business," right before she called her accountant to cancel her family's entire financial safety net.

The storm hit on New Year's Eve.

Not a snowstorm, though the temperature outside was hovering around single digits. This was a family storm, arriving in the form of my cousin Brenda—an aggressive real estate paralegal from Philadelphia who hadn't spoken to us since Thanksgiving 2021, but somehow possessed a GPS tracker for dying relatives and large bank accounts.

I was at my kitchen table, helping Trevor calculate the depreciation schedule of his dented Honda, when my phone rang.

It was an Albany number.

"Oscar Bennett?" a shrill, manic voice demanded before I could even say hello.

"Who's this?"

"It's Brenda! Your cousin Brenda! From Philly! Uncle Silas just passed away, didn't he?!"

I pinched the bridge of my nose. Word travels fast when lawyers file probate notices. "Hello, Brenda. Happy New Year to you too."

"Don't 'Happy New Year' me, Oscar! I heard through the grapevine—from the probate clerk in Albany—that Uncle Silas left over a million dollars, and that you're trying to cut the rest of the family out of the will!"

I looked across the table at Trevor, who had stopped writing down car insurance math and was staring at me with wide, terrified eyes.

"I'm not cutting anyone out, Brenda. The will specifies a twelve-month probationary trust managed by the designated executor—which is me."

"That's illegal!" Brenda screeched into the phone so loudly I had to pull it away from my ear. "You can't hoard a family estate! That money belongs to all of us! I have a consulting fee claim! I'm calling my attorney!"

"Go ahead," I said calmly. "Tell him to talk to Arthur Pendelton. Have a great night."

I hung up and blocked her number.

Trevor was trembling. "Was that... was that Brenda?"

"Yeah."

"She's going to sue us, isn't she? She sued her own dentist over a chipped molar from a popcorn kernel."

"Let her sue," I said, tossing my pen onto the table. "Pendelton's firm eats ambulance-chasing paralegals for breakfast."

Dad walked in from the kitchen holding a cup of tea. He looked tired, but there was a new steadiness in his posture. He had started his night-shift warehouse job two nights ago, and while his feet hurt, his shoulders looked lighter.

"Who was on the phone?" Dad asked.

"Brenda found out about the estate," I said.

Dad sighed, rubbing the back of his neck. "Figures. Brenda smells money the way a shark smells blood in a public pool. What are we going to do?"

"Nothing," I said. "We stick to the budget. We finish Trevor's ledger. And we wait out the twelve months."

Trevor looked down at his spiral notebook, where he had actually managed to write down Gas: $45.00 without spelling gas with a 'z'.

"Oscar?" Trevor asked quietly.

"Yeah?"

"If... if we actually make it through the year. If we don't buy any more alpacas... do you think I could get a real job? Like... an actual job where I clock in and don't disrupt knitwear?"

I smiled, leaning back in my chair. "I think that would be the greatest startup idea you've ever had, little bro."

The rest of New Year's Eve was remarkably peaceful. No screaming matches. No flying food. Just three men—a firefighter, a retired warehouse worker trying to redeem himself, and a former alpaca entrepreneur learning basic math—sitting in a quiet apartment, watching the ball drop on a muted television screen.

The real panic was finally, truly behind us.