The night I lost my job, my sister shouted, “Who’s going to pay my car loan now?” Mom backed her up. Dad started packing my things. “Your sister needs this house more than you do.” I said nothing about the company in my name or the beach house. Hours later… it all collapsed.

“I got terminated, Greg,” I said.

He didn’t miss a beat. “Then it’s time, Joe. The Austin office is waiting. The firm is ready. When do you fly down?”

I should have said tonight. I should have said right now. Instead, I told him I needed to go home first. I needed to tell my family. I needed to see if the people I had been bankrolling for half of my life would offer me a chair at the table now that I couldn’t pay for the groceries.

Cliffhanger: As I turned the key in the ignition, I didn’t know that my family had already held a wake for my career—not out of grief for me, but out of panic for their own bank accounts.

Chapter 2: The Parlor of Judgment

The drive to Carterville was a forty-five-minute descent into a reality I wasn’t prepared for. I passed the Baptist church, the sprawling Walmart, and finally, the Sinclair mailbox at the end of a gravel driveway. I counted the cars parked in the yard like a general assessing enemy forces. My parents’ sedan, my sister Megan‘s SUV, Aunt Patty‘s old Buick, and the neighbor Mrs. Dawson‘s car.