I knew Sarah kept it tucked in her designer wallet. I imagined her snatching it up, tossing her hair over her shoulder, and marching out to her car to buy her 40 person feast on my dime.
She had no idea that I had made a quiet 5-minute phone call to my bank on Monday afternoon.
While Helen and I took a leisurely morning walk around the lake, Sarah was navigating the absolute nightmare that is a suburban supermarket on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving.
I didn’t need to be there to know how it went down. Sarah would have grabbed two large shopping carts, moving through the aisles with an air of absolute entitlement.
She would have loaded up on the most expensive items she could find: the imported cheeses, the high-end wine, the massive organic turkey, the artisan breads.
She wouldn’t have checked a single price tag because, in her mind, my retirement savings were just an extension of her own bank account.
I checked my banking app while sitting on a park bench. There it was in the transaction history: an attempted charge for 942 on 18th at the local grocery store. Status declined.
I could perfectly picture the moment at the register. The exhausted cashier running the card. The sharp mechanical beep.
Sarah rolling her eyes and telling the cashier to run it again. The second beep. The rising heat in Sarah’s cheeks as the long line of stressed holiday shoppers behind her began to sigh and shift their weight.
She would have tried calling Leo, demanding he transfer funds, only to realize Leo’s checking account was empty because he had spent his last paycheck on a new gaming console.
Another attempted charge appeared on my app, this time for $400. She was trying to buy just the essentials.
Status declined because I had completely frozen the supplementary card.
I sat on the bench listening to the quiet rustle of the autumn leaves and smiled. Sarah had to leave two full carts of groceries behind and walk out of that store with nothing but her bruised ego.
By the time she pulled into my driveway, empty-handed and furious, the real nightmare was just beginning.
Sarah’s parents, Richard and Susan, were not the kind of people who adapted well to minor inconveniences, let alone full-blown disasters.
They arrived a full day early, pulling their least luxury SUV into my driveway as Sarah walked into the house with zero groceries.
I received a frantic text from Leo at 2 Hanoto.