The Wedding Money and the House Money

“Then what do I do,” I said. It came out like a little girl.

“I don’t know,” Bev said. “That’s why there’s five of you at this table. I’m going to have cake.”

Rick got up and cut the grocery store cake. He gave Bev the corner piece with the most frosting, which is what she always takes, and he set a piece in front of each of us, and then he sat back down next to me.

For a while we just ate cake. I think we all needed to.

Then Ashley set her fork down. “I want to say my part,” she said. “I don’t want cash. I said that on the phone and I was wrong. I was hurt and I said it. I’m sorry, Mom.”

“You weren’t wrong to feel it,” I said.

“Maybe not. But here’s what I’ve been thinking about all week.” She pulled a folded piece of notebook paper out of her coat pocket. “I can’t give back the wedding. But Tyler and I have eleven thousand saved. If Kels needs it, we could loan her some of it, and she pays us back when Jordan’s done with his apprenticeship.”

Kelsey stared at her. “Ash. That’s your house money.”

“I know what it is,” Ashley said. “I’m offering it anyway. It’s the closest thing I’ve got to giving you back half of a wedding.”

“No,” Kelsey said. “I’m not taking your house money. You’ve been saving that since before you got married.”

“Then don’t take all of it.”

“I’m not taking any of it,” Kelsey said, and the two of them sat there looking at each other with wet eyes, and I thought, well, at least I raised two girls who would rather give than take. Whatever else I got wrong.

Rick cleared his throat. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s do the numbers. Carol Ann, you’ve got the numbers. You always have the numbers.”

So I opened the notebook I had used the night before and laid it on the table next to the wedding photo, and I went through it, out loud, the way I would have gone through a lunch count.

“We have twenty-six thousand,” I said. “If we give eighteen, we have eight. That’s one furnace and one bad winter. I can’t do eight, Kels. I’m sorry. I lay awake on it and I can’t.”

Kelsey nodded. She did not argue. That almost broke me more than if she had.

“But I can do nine,” I said. “Nine thousand dollars, as a gift, not a loan. You’d go five percent down instead of ten. That’s eight thousand, and a thousand toward closing. You’d pay the mortgage insurance for a few years. About seventy dollars a month.”

Rick was nodding slowly. “And the rest,” he said. “The credit union told Jordan’s buddy a co-signer helps when you’re early in an apprenticeship. They’d approve them easier. Better rate.”

“We’d co-sign,” I said. “Your father and I would put our names on the loan with yours.”

I want to be honest about what that sentence cost me. Putting our names on a hundred and fifty thousand dollar loan scared me more than handing over the eighteen thousand would have. If something happened, that loan was ours too.

But it did not drain the account. It meant trusting Kelsey and Jordan to pay it, which, if I am honest, I trust more than I trust my own furnace.