Chapter 1 — The Call

“Your daughter wasted the eighteen hundred dollars meant for her laptop, and now she’s running around with some boy who doesn’t even go to school.

If you don’t come set her straight, I’m done dealing with her.”

That was what my mother told me over the phone, and I was in Dallas, locked in an office after a fourteen-hour workday, and I felt my blood boil.

My name is Jason Vance.

For five years, I had worked far from my hometown of Austin, ever since my wife, Sarah, died of cancer.

Her illness had left us with medical debts that pushed us to the edge of bankruptcy, and I had taken a position managing out-of-state industrial projects because it was the only way I could see to get us back onto solid financial ground.

My daughter, Maya, was ten years old when I left her in the care of my mother, Evelyn.

And every single month, without exception, I sent money.

For food.

For clothes.

For school supplies.

For transportation.

For medical expenses.

And a separate, generous allowance that, according to my mother, covered tuition, and tutoring, and any emergency funds Maya might ever need.

I never missed a single transfer in five years.

And yet, month after month, my mother always had a new complaint.

Maya was spending too much.