I believed him. For a while.
PART 3 — The Things That Didn’t Add Up
By month three, no bike had appeared. When I finally pressed him — “Three hundred? Two hundred?” — he just gave me a vague “close” and a mouthful of cereal. I assumed thirteen-year-olds weren’t exactly famous for financial discipline.
Then things got strange.
One night I passed his room and saw him cross-legged on the floor with a thick stack of cash — not fives, hundreds — sorting it into piles. He shoved it all into his backpack the second he saw me.
“What was that?”
“My savings.”
“Why are you carrying that much cash?”
“I have a system.”
“Your backpack is not a bank.”
“I know.”
“Then let me help you open an account.”
“No!” The answer came too fast. He softened instantly. “I mean — not yet. I’m buying the bike soon.”
For the first time, I knew he wasn’t telling me everything. I made the mistake every parent makes — accepting the answer because the alternative meant admitting something was wrong.
Then he came home nearly two hours late one rainy Saturday, jeans muddy, sleeve torn. “Walking. I took the long way. I felt like it.” Battery “dead” at thirty-eight percent when I checked. He grabbed his backpack — “I’m tired” — and went upstairs.
The following week his good winter gloves vanished. Then a phone charger. Then the emergency twenty I kept taped inside a kitchen cabinet.
