Lucius raised his hand.
"I'm not taking the civil service exam anymore. I'm using this money to start a business."
Adeline's lips moved, but she lowered her head without speaking.
Bertram turned to me.
"Tom, I think Lucius has a point. You should still put something in writing."
"Write what?"
"That you, as our eldest sister's husband, are giving up your share of the demolition money."
I laughed. I didn't even know why.
I took a deep breath.
"Fine. I'll write it."
I walked over to Mrs. Abbott, crouched beside her, and wrote a single line:
I voluntarily relinquish all claims to the eight million dollars in demolition compensation.
Then, stroke by careful stroke, I signed my name: Tom Delgado.
I set the pen down and looked at them.
"Can I go now?"
Mrs. Abbott smiled and nodded, her tone as casual as any other day.
"Don't forget to come back and make lunch. Your brother loves your homemade pasta, and Lucius has been craving it for days."
I walked down the cement road, cracked and buckled where the trucks had rolled over it.
I thought about the summer before my senior year of college, when I'd gone to my internship and fallen hopelessly in love with Florence, a girl so pure she was like a blank page.
I was twenty-five when she died giving birth to our child. Neither of them survived.
At the funeral, Mrs. Abbott grabbed my hand and wept until her voice broke.
"Tom, Florence died because of you. Her father passed years ago. From now on, you're the pillar of this family."
"My health isn't what it used to be. Your brother and sisters are still young. You have to help me hold this family together. I'm counting on you."
That day, I stood in my cold mourning clothes before Florence's headstone, clenched my jaw, and nodded.
From that day forward, my youth and my dreams took a back seat to this family.
I could have finished my degree. Found a good job.
I could have had my own life. My own future.
But I gave it all up.
After the funeral, I held Lucius in one arm, the boy barely old enough to walk, and knelt before Uncle Harold and the other relatives, pressing my forehead to the ground in gratitude for helping arrange Florence's burial.
Mrs. Abbott had four children. One of the deliveries had caused severe hemorrhaging. Her health never recovered after that, and she could only manage light housework.
The first year after I dropped out, I went to Uncle Harold's place to learn how to plant rice seed. I learned how to raise seedlings, how to transplant them into the paddies.
The sun beat down until my skin peeled in sheets. Thick calluses formed across my palms. Even holding a fork at dinner hurt.
When the busy season ended, I joined the local women picking fruit for the orchards. Bent over all day long, my back screaming like it might snap in two.
Fifty dollars a day.
When there was no fruit to pick, I hiked into the hills to dig up herbs and sold them for whatever small change I could get to help cover the household expenses.
At harvest time, I went door to door begging neighbors to help bring in our crops. I fumbled through the farmwork, clumsy as a kid trying to do a grown man's job.
The second year, I planted every inch of Mrs. Abbott's land with fruit trees.
Saplings take three years to bear fruit.
Three years without income wasn't an option.
So I started bouncing between the small factories in town, picking up whatever shifts I could find.
In March, I made plastic crates. The workshop was an oven. The fumes from the melting plastic stung so bad I could barely keep my eyes open. Blisters rose on my fingers, raw and bleeding, but I didn't dare stop.
May and June, back to the orchards picking fruit.
July onward, I ground glass into beads at the pearl factory. Fine dust coated my face, filled my lungs, left me coughing until I couldn't breathe.
When winter came, my hands swelled up like sausages from the cold.
After my shift, I still had to go to the chicken farm to collect eggs.
I wouldn't drag myself home until deep into the night.
During those years, I often cried in the dark when exhaustion finally broke me.
The next morning, I'd grit my teeth, haul myself out of bed, and do it all over again.
Year after year, every piece of clothing on my back was someone else's castoff.
But when my brother and sisters needed money, I never hesitated. Not once.
