…the power company’s account number taped to the bottom of a casino player card with my son’s name printed across the front.
Not just one card.
Three of them.
I pulled the cards out of the drawer and heard my son wake up in the living room asking why the fans stopped. He came into the hallway rubbing his eyes, still wearing the same stained T-shirt he slept in every day, and froze when he saw what was in my hand.
I asked him how unemployed people afford casino memberships.
He immediately started talking too fast. Said the cards were old. Said a friend let him use them for free buffet coupons. Said none of it meant anything.
Then his phone buzzed on the desk between us.
He lunged for it before I could see the screen, but I grabbed it first.
One unread text.
“Tell your mother if she pays half tonight I’ll hold the title another week.”
No name attached. Just a Mississippi number.
I asked him what title.
He kept saying, “It’s handled,” which is not an answer to anything.
I opened his desk drawer farther looking for the electric account paperwork, and underneath a stack of fast-food napkins I found my car title with a pink pawn loan slip paper-clipped to it.
Twenty-four hundred dollars.
Past due by nine days.
My son sat down hard on the edge of the bed after I read it. He looked more embarrassed than scared.
Then he said, real quiet, “I was trying to win enough to put everything back before you noticed.”
I asked him how long this had been going on.
Instead of answering, he reached for the phone in my hand because it started vibrating again.
This time the caller ID said “River Bend Storage.”
Before I could answer it, my son grabbed my arm and said, “Mom, if they tell you what’s actually inside unit 407 before I explain why Dad was paying for it before he died…”