Maid for Each Other(51)

“Oh, my God, look at those windows,” she squealed, and she wasn’t wrong. One of my favorite things about the place was that it had more windows than walls. She made a noise and said, “Declan, your house is beautiful.”

“Thanks,” I said, happier than I probably should’ve been that she approved.

She made me give her a full tour, then she made me take her out on the private terrace.

“I have to go to Benny’s now because I got called in, and that makes me so sad,” she said. “I want to force you to sit on the balcony for hours so I can just watch the street below like a dog with his head out the window.”

“Sorry, kiddo,” I said, walking over to the stack of mail on the kitchen counter.

“Hopefully my car didn’t get towed; I parked it down the street yesterday and forgot all about it.”

“Why don’t you take mine?” I asked. “You’ve got the keys and it’s in the nice, warm garage; you should take it.”

“No,” she said. “I’d feel like I was taking advantage of you, and I would die if something happened to it.”

“It’s not taking advantage of me because I’m the one who offered in the first place, and nothing’s going to happen to it. And if it does, well, that’s why we’ve got insurance.”

“Please don’t take this the wrong way, but I am constantly amazed by how little money means to you,” she said, her eyebrows all bunched together again. “You don’t care about stuff at all.”

“Stuff is just stuff,” I said, absolutely meaning it. “I told you that.”

It drove Nana Marian crazy, the way I was unfazed by money, but the difference was that she grew up without it. She still got excited by every expensive purchase she made, even after all this time, and she loved to tell me exactly how much things cost.

My grandmother said to me on a weekly basis, Can you believe how rich I am?

And she didn’t mean it in an arrogant way. She just literally could not believe, even after all these years, that she was rich.

I was the opposite.

We’d had money and expensive things my entire life.

I mean, my parents made me work for things I’d wanted when I was growing up, to teach me about priorities, and I’d always witnessed their generosity to others.

And I was grateful for that.

But when you grew up in a house where your father had an entire garage full of expensive sports cars, you weren’t really impressed by expensive sports cars anymore.

I’m not even sure I realized that level of privilege until I met Roman.

Through a glitch in the system, I ended up with Roman as a college roommate, even though I’d signed up to have a dorm room to myself. I didn’t mind because Roman was cool as shit and I had a blast with him, but he didn’t play it casual like everyone else always had.

He didn’t act like having money was normal, and he kind of acted like it was disgusting.

Somehow in a nonjudgmental way.

He’d been considering joining the Peace Corps when I met him, and he was super into social issues. He opened my eyes to so many things and kind of completely changed my way of looking at the world.

By the end of my sophomore year, I wanted to quit school and join the Peace Corps myself.

But then Roman said something important to me.

You can do more good with money than without it, he’d said. Why would you leave this life and join the Peace Corps, where you could help a few people, when you could graduate and get a job at Hathaway and make millions of dollars that you could give away?

We talked about it a lot, and by the time I was a senior, we’d formulated a plan.

He loved number-crunching and had intended on finding a job in finance or accounting with a nonprofit.

I loved business. I loved the challenge of finding new and exciting ways to grow a company and make more money. I wanted to work for Hathaway and move up in the ranks.

We found a way to merge our interests.

My career goals remained unchanged, but my plan for what I was doing with my money had changed.

On the surface, I operated like everyone else in my family. I used my income to buy and maintain two great apartments, nice cars, and great clothes.

And I’d be lying if I said I didn’t like nice things.

But instead of investing all my excess income to become richer, I invested so I had more to give away. My family didn’t know （Nana Marian would fucking disown me）， my friends didn’t know; it was only Roman and me working our asses off to distribute funds to those who needed them via our anonymous and extremely confidential partnership.

It was complicated and more time-consuming than either of us had imagined, but we also saw it as a priority. This was probably the tea that Abi had wanted and I was unwilling to share—especially not at this juncture of our efforts.

“Please, take my car, Abi,” I said, gazing at her face, scrunched in worry. “I want you to.”

“Okay, maybe I will,” she said, and I could tell she didn’t know if she was actually going to do it or not. “I promise to be super careful if I do.”

“I know,” I said. “Have a good night at work, Mariano.”

“You too, Powell.”

23

Conversations with Friends

Abi

I didn’t expect him to text me through my entire shift.