On New Year's Eve, my wife's family suddenly proposed a red envelope game.
Whoever drew the lucky envelope would grant one wish to the person who sent it.
Round one—I drew the lucky envelope.
My mother-in-law, Nanette Mason, wanted me to buy her the gold bracelet she'd been eyeing for months.
Round two. Me again.
My father-in-law, Nicholas Mason, wanted me to trade in his old car for a BMW.
Round three. Still me.
My wife, Isabel Mason, wanted me to clear out every designer handbag in her shopping cart.
Then it was my wife's brother-in-law's turn to send the red envelope—the widower of her late elder sister, Arnold Delgado. And somehow, the lucky draw landed on me again.
Without missing a beat, he asked for a house in the city center worth tens of millions.
I frowned, about to refuse, when my usually quiet daughter grabbed my arm.
"Dad, say yes!"
"You have to say yes!"
——
The table went silent.
Nanette let out a sharp gasp and was the first to recover. "Leslie Harding, you're not thinking of backing out, are you?"
Arnold Delgado shot to his feet. "You agreed to the first three rounds no problem. Now it's my turn and suddenly you want to renege? How is that fair?"
My wife, Isabel, said nothing—but the look she gave me was loaded with reproach.
Reproach for ruining the festive mood of a family game on New Year's Eve.
I let my gaze sweep across every face at the table.
It settled, finally, on Arnold's.
"The first three rounds—fine. I can chalk those up to a game."
"But a house worth tens of millions? Arnold, you've got some nerve asking for that."
"Don't forget—your current job exists because I pulled strings to get you in."
The air turned to ice.
Arnold's face flushed crimson.
"Leslie, yes, I asked you for help getting that job. But you agreed to play this game yourself. When it's your turn to send the red envelope, you can make demands too!"
"Can't afford to play, and now you want to pin that on me?"
Nicholas Mason let out a cold snort.
"All he did was get Arnold some low-level clerk position at his company. The way he carries on, you'd think he landed him some incredible job!"
Laughable.
My company was a Fortune 500 firm. Getting Arnold—a graduate of some bottom-tier vocational college—an expedited position there was already an extraordinary arrangement.
But because I was always busy with work, because I wasn't as smooth-tongued as Arnold, in their eyes I was somehow lesser than him in every way.
And now they wanted to strong-arm me into fulfilling this absurd demand.
"Leslie."
Isabel frowned at me.
"Arnold has been devastated ever since my sister passed. All he wants now is a place of his own. Would it kill you to help him? Or do you really want to be the kind of man who breaks his word in front of his own daughter?"
I almost laughed.
"I break my word?"
"I make a hundred thousand dollars a month. Fifty thousand goes to you. Thirty thousand goes to your parents."
"Every household expense, every piece of clothing, every tuition payment for our daughter—that's all me."
"When we got married, I promised you'd never suffer. And I kept that promise."
"But these three rounds of red envelopes have already cost me close to two million dollars."
"I don't have the money to buy Arnold a house!"
I thought hearing all of this might stir something in Isabel and her family. Some flicker of gratitude. Some acknowledgment.
All I saw was their expressions growing colder.
As if everything I'd done was simply expected. Not even worth mentioning.
Arnold rolled his eyes.
"No money? Then borrow some. Aren't you some big-shot project director? Skim a little off the company funds—no one would even notice. Just put it back later."
"Or better yet—when your parents died in that car accident, didn't you get a massive insurance payout?"
My head snapped toward Isabel.
One month ago, my parents had been killed in a car accident. I was the sole beneficiary of their life insurance.
I'd been drowning in grief. I'd planned to set that money aside as an education fund for my daughter.
