Chapter 6 - Moving Day
The deadline arrived on a crisp morning in late March. The ground was thawed, and the first hints of green were starting to push through the muddy soil.
This time, there was no surprise moving truck hired by me. Melissa had rented a U-Haul herself, using the money from her very first full-time paycheck. And instead of professional movers, the crew consisted of me, Dad, and Tyler, who had suddenly developed a noticeable amount of muscle from his wrestling practices.
We moved with a focused efficiency. The twelve giant boxes were loaded into the back of the yellow truck, followed by the mattresses, the couch, and the kids' desks.
When the last item was loaded, Melissa walked through the empty townhouse one last time. The carpets showed the deep indents of furniture that had stayed too long. The walls were bare.
She stood in the center of the living room, the exact spot where she had called me cheap three months ago.
"Ready?" I asked, standing by the open front door.
She looked at me, a calm, steady expression in her eyes that I had never seen before. "Yeah. I'm ready."
The new apartment on the North Side was smaller, yes, but it was bright. It was on the second floor of a well-maintained brick building, with large windows that let in the afternoon sun. The kitchen didn't have an island, but it had a cozy breakfast nook that looked out over a courtyard with an old oak tree.
We spent the day carrying the boxes up the stairs. By evening, the apartment was a chaotic maze of cardboard, but it felt warm.
Mom had already set up the coffee maker and was brewing a fresh pot. Chloe was in her new room, which she shared with a large bookshelf, carefully arranging her stuffed animals on her bed. Tyler was in his nook, setting up his computer monitor with a look of intense concentration.
Melissa sat down on one of the unpacked boxes in the kitchen, a mug of coffee between her hands.
"Alright, Coordinator," I said, pulling out a yellow legal pad from my backpack and sitting on the floor across from her. "First lesson in financial survival. Let's look at your fixed expenses."
For the next two hours, while the rest of the family unpacked around us, Melissa and I looked at the numbers. We mapped out her rent, her utilities, her grocery budget, and her bus pass allocation. For the first time, she didn't look away when the numbers got tight. She didn't cry when she realized she only had eighty dollars of discretionary spending left for the month.
"If I stay on this track," she said, her eyes tracing the lines of my handwriting, "I can save five hundred dollars by summer?"
"Exactly," I said. "And that five hundred dollars is your emergency fund. That means the next time your car—or whatever transportation you use—has an issue, you don't call me. You call your own savings account."
She looked at the yellow pad, then at me. "Thank you, Drew."
"Don't thank me yet. You still have six boxes of clothes to unpack."
May you like
"Go home, Doc," she laughed, pushing my shoulder playfully. "You've done enough."
As I drove back to my condo that night, I looked at my phone mounted on the dashboard. The contact for Melissa Carter was no longer blocked. It was open, clear, and quiet.
