I hung up and sat there. Then I did the math. Eighty-eight thousand six hundred and forty dollars, out the door. Ninety-one thousand four hundred, minus the penalty you pay when you take money out of a 529 for something that isn't school. I'd read about the penalty. I read about everything. Ten percent on the earnings, plus regular income tax. It came out close enough that I put my forehead down on Grandma Ida's steering wheel and did not move until the bell rang for fifth period, and then I didn't move for a while after that, either.
* * *
I didn't say anything that night. I want to be honest about that, because people who hear this story sometimes imagine I came storming in with a printout, and I didn't. I came home and did my calculus homework and ate my mother's chicken spaghetti and watched my father and my brother talk about the M4's launch control. Or watched my father talk about it. Grant said "Yes sir" a lot.
I gave them one day. I think part of me thought that if I didn't say it out loud, it would rearrange itself into something else. Maybe Dad's business had finally sold. Maybe the car was financed and the 529 was gone for some other reason, a medical bill, something I could forgive. Maybe Grandma Ida's account had been moved, rolled over into something, protected.
On Wednesday night my mother made pork chops, and I waited until everyone had served themselves, because I was raised right, and then I said, "Mom, I talked to Vanderbilt's financial aid office yesterday."
My mother's fork stopped halfway to her mouth. My father kept chewing.
"They said y'all updated the Profile," I said. "They said Grandma Ida's account is at zero."
Nobody said anything. The air conditioning kicked on. Grant put his knife down very carefully on the edge of his plate, the way you'd set down something that might go off.
"Is that true?" I said.
"Josie," my mother said. "Baby, we were going to talk to you about it."
"When?"
"This weekend. We wanted to wait until after Grant's birthday, we didn't want to—"
"Is it true?"
"It's not as simple as you're making it," my father said. He wiped his mouth with his napkin and folded it and set it down beside his plate. That was his serious-talk gesture. He'd done it before telling us Grandpa Calder had died and before telling us we weren't going to Gulf Shores the summer of the hurricane. "Your mother and I have been carrying a lot this year. More than you know. The business has had a hard stretch. And your brother has had a hard stretch. And we made a decision as a family—"
"I wasn't in the family that decided," I said.