“Arthur? What is it?” I heard my mother ask faintly in the background.
“What… what the hell is this?” my father stammered. The booming, arrogant roar was completely gone from his voice. It was replaced by a thin, reedy squeak of absolute, unadulterated terror. “Notice of Default? Fifteen thousand dollars past due? Risk of immediate foreclosure? Maya, what is this?!”
I leaned back in my patio chair, resting my feet on the railing.
“Did you honestly forget, Dad?” I asked, my voice as cold as ice. “Did you forget that I have been carrying the mortgage on that four-bedroom mansion for the past five years?”
“I… I thought you were just helping out…” he wheezed.
“Helping out?” I scoffed. “You squandered your retirement day-trading crypto, and your business went bankrupt. You called me a failure and a nuisance the other night, but without this failure’s money, you and Mom would have been living in a motel a long time ago.”
“Maya, you can’t do this!” Arthur yelled, panic finally setting in. “This is our home! The deed is in my name!”
“It’s your home, yes, on paper,” I agreed clinically. “And therefore, the massive, crippling debt attached to it is entirely yours, too. I called the bank’s mortgage department while I was driving to Seattle. I formally revoked my payment guarantee and removed myself as an authorized payer on the account. I had actually stopped paying it two months ago, knowing I was going to move out soon once I got my promotion.”
“Two months?!” my mother shrieked in the background.
“I was going to give you a heads-up,” I continued mercilessly. “But then you slapped me. So, I decided to let the bank deliver the news instead. From this exact moment forward, you have to figure out how to pay your own massive mortgage.”
