Chapter 3 - The Spoiled Golden Child
Silence smothered the dining room. Logan, who had spent the last hour bragging to Aunt Clara’s husband about his leather seats and twin-turbo engine, suddenly choked on his eggnog. His face flushed bright crimson.
"Julian, bro, what the hell?" Logan stammered, shoving his phone into his pocket. "Dad bought me that car for graduating college! What does that have to do with you or Grandma?"
"Look at the routing number, Logan," I said coldly.
I laid out three bank printouts side by side. The dates aligned with terrifying precision. On the 1st of every month, $2,200 entered the account from my Frankfurt employer. On the 3rd of every month, an automatic debit of $1,450 went directly to Audi Financial Services under Logan’s name. The remaining $750? Transferred directly into my mother’s personal checking account, labeled simply: *Household Sundries*.
"Sundries," I repeated, turning my gaze to my mother. "Like that diamond tennis bracelet you’re wearing right now, Mom? Or the luxury spa weekend you posted on Facebook while Grandma was wrapping herself in three layers of blankets because her furnace pilot light went out in November?"
Aunt Clara leaned forward, squinting through her bifocals at the papers spread across the centerpiece. Her expression hardened from festive cheer into utter disgust. "Arthur... is this true? Evelyn called me two weeks ago asking if I had any spare firewood. You told us she was just getting forgetful and hoarding her pension!"
"She is forgetful!" Dad bellowed, rising to his full height. He puffed out his chest, trying to loom over me the way he used to when I was sixteen. "She’s eighty-two years old, Clara! She doesn’t know what she needs! We manage her estate to protect her! Julian throws a little money around and thinks he’s king of the family!"
"A little money?" I laughed, though the sound was bitter and hollow. "That was my life savings, Dad. I lived in a freezing forty-square-meter studio in Stuttgart, ate instant noodles three nights a week, and worked overtime on holidays so my grandmother wouldn't have to choose between heart medication and heat. And you turned her into a prop so your golden son could peel rubber out of the country club driveway!"
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Grandma Evelyn’s chin quivered. A single tear tracked through the deep creases of her cheek. She reached into her pocket and pulled out the small cellophane bag of sugar cookies she had baked with her trembling hands.
"Arthur," she whispered, her voice cracking with the heartbreak only a mother can feel. "You told me Julian forgot about me. You told me nobody cared... so you could drive a new car?"
