Kayla held out the manila envelope to my dad, her hands shaking, and said, Mr Tate, I think she did the same thing to my grandma.
Inside were bank statements, texts, and a handwritten IOU, all showing that Brittany had talked Kaylas eighty-one year old grandmother out of four thousand dollars the year before, with the exact same story. A dental emergency. A promise to pay it back by her tax refund. A refund that never came.
It was not a loan gone sideways. It was a pattern. Brittany went looking for trusting old people with a little money set aside, and my father, who saved for his next truck one coffee can at a time for forty years, was just the latest.
She asked why a man of seventy-four even needed a truck. The truth was she needed a mark, and a kind old man was the easiest kind to find.
Cody turned around in his chair and looked at Brittany like he was seeing her for the first time. Kayla laid out the dates. Two elderly victims, the same script, money taken by a story that was never true. That is not borrowing. In Alabama, taking money from an older person by false pretenses has a name, and it is not a nice one.
Brittany tried the little laugh she always used. Nobody laughed with her this time. Cody stood up, walked around Moms old chair where she had seated herself at the head of the table, and told her to get her coat.
Faced with Kaylas envelope and the prospect of two families comparing notes for the police, Brittany paid my father back. All thirty-eight hundred, within the week. Kaylas grandmother got her four thousand too. People like Brittany move fast once they realize the quiet old folks have loud daughters.
Dad got his truck. A good used one, nothing fancy, with tires that hold air. He drives it to church, to the VA, and every Sunday to the cemetery to see Mom.
Kayla and I are friends now. Cody is single, and wiser. And my father keeps his truck money in the bank these days, where a girlfriend with a story cannot reach it.