The first entry was dated three months before my eighteenth birthday.
Daniel turns eighteen soon. Need to make him save even if he hates me for it.
I frowned.
The next page contained calculations.
$250 x 12 months.
$3,000 per year.
Then insurance estimates.
Used car prices.
Apartment deposits.
Community college tuition.
Dad had listed everything a young adult might need.
Another entry said:
If I hand him money, he’ll spend it helping me. If I call it rent, he’ll learn to budget around it.
I laughed through my tears.
“That stubborn bastard.”
Frank almost smiled.
“He was that.”
There were sixty envelopes in the box.
Five years.
Exactly $15,000.
Every dollar I had paid Dad had been saved.
But taped beneath the final envelope was a bank statement.
The balance wasn’t $15,000.
It was $43,812.16.
I stared at it.
“How?”
Frank tapped the notebook.
“Keep going.”
Dad had deposited the rent into an investment account, then added money from his own paychecks.
