Chapter 2 - THE MONEY ETHAN HANDED OVER EVERY FRIDAY
Franklin had entered Ethan’s life when Ethan was sixteen.
By then, Ethan’s biological father had been gone for years and Dana was working reception at a dental office in Greenwood.
Franklin arrived looking like stability.
He owned a modest house on the south side of Indianapolis, drove a clean pickup, and worked as a project supervisor for a commercial flooring contractor.
Within six months, Dana married him.
Within eight, Ethan understood Franklin’s rules.
Nothing was free.
Electricity cost money.
Food cost money.
Hot water cost money.
A teenager who wanted to be treated like a man should contribute like one.
So Ethan got a part-time job at a building-supply warehouse.
After graduation, he went full-time instead of immediately starting community college.
Every Friday, his paycheck landed in an account Dana had helped him open when he was seventeen.
Franklin called the arrangement “adult responsibility.”
Three hundred dollars from each paycheck went toward the house.
Another two hundred, Dana told Ethan, went into savings for Ivy Tech tuition and a reliable car.
The rest was Ethan’s.
At least that was what he believed.
By nineteen, Ethan was working forty to forty-five hours most weeks loading cabinets, flooring, drywall, and plumbing supplies.
He rarely complained.
Complaining gave Franklin material.
“You think rent is free?”
“You think adults get sick days whenever they feel tired?”
“You want independence? Pay for it.”
Then Ethan’s appendix ruptured.
His supervisor, Kevin Morales, had sent him to urgent care after Ethan nearly passed out beside the loading dock.
By midnight, surgeons at St. Vincent had removed the appendix and cleaned infection from his abdomen.
The surgeon was clear.
No warehouse work Monday.
No lifting heavy materials.
No trying to prove anything.
Franklin arrived the next afternoon already angry.
“You’re missing another week?”
“The surgeon said—”
“Doctors say whatever protects them.”
Dana sat by the window and said nothing.
That silence continued until the afternoon Franklin slapped him.
After the police separated everyone, Franklin was taken downstairs for questioning.
Hospital security barred him from returning to Ethan’s room.
Dana remained.
For nearly twenty minutes, neither mother nor son spoke.
Finally Ethan asked, “Why Monday?”
Dana looked up.
“What?”
“He kept saying Monday.”
“You work Mondays.”
“So?”
Her face changed.
Just slightly.
Ethan noticed.
“Mom.”
“The mortgage is due.”
Ethan stared at her.
“What does my shift have to do with your mortgage?”
Dana looked toward the open doorway.
“Nothing.”
It came too quickly.
Ethan felt the first cold edge of suspicion.
“How much money is in my school account?”
Dana stopped breathing normally.
Ethan had never actually seen the savings balance.
He had trusted her.
“Mom.”
She stood.
“This isn’t the time.”
“I’ve been giving you two hundred dollars a week for almost two years.”
“It isn’t that simple.”
The pain in Ethan’s abdomen suddenly mattered less.
“How much is left?”
Dana picked up her purse.
“I need some air.”
May you like
Ethan watched his mother walk out of the hospital room without answering.
For the first time, he wondered whether Franklin had been demanding Monday’s paycheck because the money Ethan supposedly owed the family was actually money the family could no longer survive without.
