Room-maid(58)

“If it’s something you love so much that you do it for fun, shouldn’t that be your career? I’ll admit that I don’t know a whole lot about salaries, but I thought computer programmers made decent money.”

“That’s the problem. It’s only decent money and I had to make a lot more than that,” he said with a wry smile.

“Why?” As someone who’d chosen a job because she loved it, it was hard for me to understand when other people didn’t do the same.

He closed his laptop and set it on the coffee table and I got the feeling that something very important was about to happen. Then he turned toward me, his arm along the back of the couch, almost touching me.

“You asked me once if I grew up with money. I didn’t grow up with it, but I was born into it. When I was five years old, my father was convicted of insider trading and running a Ponzi scheme. He stole a lot of money from a lot of people and got fifty years.”

Wow. I did not even know what to say.

“My mother had come from money herself, but my father had stolen most of her parents’ money in the scam, so there was practically nothing left when he was incarcerated. My mom had never been to college, had never held a job, and didn’t know what to do. From the time I was little she told me that I had to take care of her and our family, that it was my responsibility. I got a job as soon as I was old enough and later I went into the same line of work as my father so that I could support her.”

“Support her?” I echoed. I wondered if she was sick. Or elderly. “Like, is she in a nursing home?”

“No. She’s forty-eight. Not quite old enough for a nursing home yet. She just doesn’t work and I’m the one who pays for everything in her life. I mean, occasionally she’ll get married again but her husbands tend not to last when they see how she spends and there’s always a prenup.”

That explained the stepsister. Which prompted me to ask, “Do you have any siblings that could help?”

“I have a younger brother, but he’s one of those get-rich-quick schemers. There’s always another big, overblown plan for how he’s going to make a fortune that inevitably fails and he’s constantly broke. Do you have one of those in your family?”

“Not really. Mostly they’re just rich. Not a lot of failing. A ton of scheming, though.” I paused, wondering whether it was okay for me to say anything about his situation, but deciding that if I was really his friend, I would. “Why don’t you just tell her she needs to get a job?”

“I’m not sure she would even know how. She just relies on me to keep sending her more and more money.”

That first day when we met—this was why he loved Pigeon. Because her love was unconditional and she didn’t ask for anything in return. So many other things were starting to make sense now—why he didn’t drive a flashier car. How he was good at budgeting. He was so sweetly generous, even though his mother was totally taking advantage of him. I wished there was a way to kindly let him know that he deserved to live his own life without this hanging over him. “I hate to ask this, but what if something happened to you? What would she do then?” After she presumably burned through whatever life insurance he had?

“I don’t know.”

“My guess is she would find a way to survive, without your help.” People like that usually did. I was formerly rich and I’d done it. The irony that Tyler was the one helping me do it, though, was not lost on me.

“She would probably get married again,” he said. “Sometimes I feel like I’m doing a public service for all the men of Texas by financing her lifestyle. And I know it sounds ridiculous. Me working at a job just to make my mom happy and comfortable.”

“Trust me, it doesn’t sound ridiculous at all. I understand.” I’d been raised similarly, only with a different set of expectations. It was never in the plans that I would take care of my parents; only that I would be a credit to them and their business and social standing. When you were raised a specific way, it was really hard to just let it go.

“Most people don’t. Most women don’t.”

Now I understood the disconnect of him being the way that he was and looking the way that he did but not having a girlfriend. A woman like Oksana would not take too kindly to his money being spent on somebody besides her. “That must be tough. But I really do get it.”

“Only you stood up to your parents and went against what they raised you to do.”

“I think you were the one who told me that we always have a choice. I try to keep choosing the things that are right for me. I’m not even completely free of the burdens of their expectations yet. I’m still a work in progress. And I know how hard it is.”

He nodded, giving me a wry smile. “Wow. Thanks for letting me unload. I’ve never told anyone any of this before.”

A spark of joy pierced my heart that he would trust me. “Really?”

“It’s sort of humiliating to admit that your father is a felon and your mother is selfish and a leech. It’s not really something you want to advertise.”

My heart melted, again. “I think it makes the man you’ve become even more admirable, given how you were raised.”

“Thank you.” His gratitude was deep and serious sounding and it took all my strength not to reach out and hug him. “And it’s not like I don’t ever get to use my programming skills. Part of being good with computers is being good at logic and math, which helps me out in my day-to-day. I also designed a program that helps me more effectively monitor investments.”