I need to tell you about Cindy, because otherwise none of this makes sense.
Cindy Brandt is Josh’s mother. She’s fifty-nine, a few months short of sixty. She’s divorced from Josh’s father, Rick, who moved to Tulsa with a woman from his bowling league fifteen years ago and sends Josh a text on his birthday most years.
Cindy is the loudest person in every room. She has opinions about everything and announces all of them. She runs on attention the way a car runs on gas. When things are about her, she’s charming and funny and generous with compliments. When they aren’t, she finds a way to make them about her.
She’s not a monster. I want to be fair about that. She loves Josh in her own way. She’s good with our nephews. She’s the first one to bring a casserole when somebody’s sick.
But she’s careless with other people. With their feelings, their time, and their things. And when she breaks something, she laughs and tells you to lighten up.
At our wedding seven years ago, she gave a toast at the reception that lasted eleven minutes and was mostly about her own wedding. When Josh and I bought our house, she showed up on moving day, criticized the kitchen cabinets, and left before anything got carried in.
Two years ago, Josh co-signed a loan for her car, a white Buick Enclave, because her credit wasn’t good enough after the divorce. She missed three payments. Each time, the credit union called Josh, and Josh paid it so his own credit wouldn’t take the hit. That was $1,467 she never paid back. She never mentioned it, and Josh never asked.
And she’d never been kind to my father. Not mean, exactly. Just dismissive. At Christmas she talked over him. At the reunions she called him “Josh’s wife’s daddy” instead of his name. At Thanksgiving she once asked him, loudly, in front of everybody, whether he could even hear what she was saying, and then laughed when he said “What?”
My father has never said one unkind word about her. Not one.
So here’s what I hadn’t told anybody.
For eighteen months, Josh and I had been putting back $250 a month into a savings account at our credit union. The account was labeled MOM’S 60TH on our banking app.
We were going to send Cindy on a cruise for her sixtieth birthday next spring: four nights out of Galveston to Cozumel, an ocean-view cabin, with a little extra for her shore excursions and souvenirs. It was Josh’s idea. His mother had always wanted to go on a cruise. She’d talked about it his whole life. She’d never been anywhere farther than Branson.
By June, the account held $4,500.
And Cindy knew. Josh had made the mistake of mentioning it at Christmas, with the details still fuzzy, and she had grabbed onto it with both hands. She’d been telling the whole beauty shop about it ever since.
Every Friday morning, Cindy got her hair done at Darlene’s Shear Elegance on Main Street. Every Friday since Christmas, according to everyone in town, she’d told the ladies under the dryers about her cruise. “My son is sending me on a cruise for my sixtieth. Out of Galveston. Ocean view. He’s such a good boy.”
She’d already bought cruise clothes. She’d shown me a new swimsuit cover-up and three sundresses from Dillard’s, charged to her store card. She’d bought a waterproof phone case and a sun hat with a brim the size of a hubcap.
The cruise wasn’t booked yet. We were waiting for the spring prices to drop. The money was still sitting in our account.
That Sunday evening, the day after the reunion, I sat with Josh on our back steps again. The cicadas were loud in the oak trees. The light was going gold over the neighbor’s soybean field.
I’d been thinking about it all day.
“I want to spend it on Dad,” I said.
Ethan Blake is a skilled Creative Content Specialist with a talent for crafting engaging and thought-provoking narratives. With a strong background in storytelling and digital content creation, Ethan brings a unique perspective to his role at TheArchivists, where he curates and produces captivating content for a global audience.
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