When I lent Dad that $38,000 three years earlier, I did one thing that infuriated him at the time. I made him sign a promissory note.
I didn’t do it to be cold. I’d spent ten years in finance watching what happens to families when money changes hands on a handshake. People forget amounts and remember things differently. They get resentful.
So I printed a standard promissory note from a legal forms website and paid a real estate attorney in Littleton, a kind older woman named Patricia Gaines, $350 to review it. The note said Dad would repay me $38,000 at four percent interest, with monthly payments starting after one year and the full balance due in five years. It also said the loan was secured by Miller Home Builders’ equipment: two excavators, a skid steer, a dump truck, and a trailer. Patricia had me file a UCC-1 financing statement with the Colorado Secretary of State. It cost $8, and it put a public lien on the equipment so nobody could sell it or borrow against it without paying me first.
Dad called it “lawyer nonsense.” He said I didn’t trust him.
“It’s not about trust, Dad,” I told him. “It’s about making sure we both remember the same thing.”
He signed it, grumbling. Over the next two years, he made exactly four payments of $420 each, and then he stopped. Every time I brought it up, he said things were tight and he’d catch up next quarter. I let it go because he was my father.
“Brandon found out about the lien,” Mom said quietly. “He wants to use the equipment as collateral for a business line of credit. A big one. Two hundred thousand dollars from some lender in Aurora. But the bank won’t approve it while your lien is on file.”
“So they needed me to release it.”
Mom nodded. “Brandon told your father that if you came on this trip, you’d find out about the partnership and make a scene. He said you’d threaten to call the loan or block the deal. He said the only way to get it done was to keep you away until it was signed.”
“And then what? They’d just never tell me?”
“Brandon said once the papers were signed and the engagement was announced, you’d be too embarrassed to fight it. He said you’d forgive the loan as a wedding present to your sister.” Mom’s voice broke. “He said you always give in eventually.”
I laughed, and it came out bitter. “He’s right. I always have.”
“Your father wanted to believe him,” Mom said. “Brandon talks about growth and investors and expanding into Colorado Springs. Your father’s sixty-one, Millie. His knees are shot. He wants to believe someone’s going to save the business so he doesn’t have to admit it’s failing.”
“And Vanessa?”
“Vanessa thinks Brandon’s wonderful.” Mom wiped her eyes. “She doesn’t know about the loan, or the lien. She just knows Brandon’s going to propose, and that he and Dad are going to be partners, and that you would ruin it.”
I stood up and walked to the window. The moon was a bright white smear on the black water.
“Mom,” I said, “what do you know about Brandon? Really?”
She hesitated. “He’s in real estate investment. He has his own company. Smith Capital Partners.”
“Have you ever seen his office?”
“No.”
“Met his parents?”
“No. He says they live in Arizona.”
“Do you know if he’s ever been married? Been sued? Owes anybody money?”
Mom stared at me. “Why would I know that?”
I picked up my phone. Premium Wi-Fi was included with the penthouse, unlike the cabins on deck two.
“Because I’m going to find out,” I said.
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