Monday morning arrived with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer to the skull.
Dan woke up on the couch to Jacob's panicked voice cutting through the apartment like a siren. His neck was stiff from sleeping at an awkward angle, his head was throbbing from too much beer and too little water, and his mouth felt like something had died in it.
"Dad! DAD! The internet's not working!"
Dan sat up, the room spinning slightly. The PlayStation was still on, having run all night, the TV showing a screensaver. Six empty beer bottles sat on the coffee table in accusatory formation. Sunlight streamed through the window blinds, and Dan squinted against it like a vampire.
"What time is it?" he croaked.
"Seven-thirty!" Jacob appeared in the hallway, still in his Spider-Man pajamas, holding his tablet like it was broken. "My class starts in an hour and I can't get online!"
Dan's skin prickled. The internet. Of course. They'd been three weeks overdue on the bill, and the email had said service would be cut off if they didn't pay by today.
Alicia emerged from the bedroom, pushing her long dark hair out of her face. She was wearing one of Dan's old t-shirts as a nightgown, and her eyes had the puffy look of someone who'd been crying or hadn't slept well or both.
"What's wrong?" she asked, though her tone suggested she already knew. There was always something wrong these days.
"Internet's down," Dan said, hauling himself off the couch. His head protested the sudden movement.
"Did you check the router?"
The router sat on a shelf near the TV, its lights blinking in an angry red pattern instead of the reassuring green they should have been. Dan unplugged it, counted to ten, plugged it back in. The lights cycled through their startup sequence and then returned to red.
"It's not the router," Dan said, "We're late on the bill. They cut us off."
"What are we going to do, Dan?" Alicia's voice was still quiet, still controlled, but Dan could hear the stress underneath. "Jacob has online school. You need internet to apply for jobs."
"I know." Dan ran his hands through his hair, trying to think past the headache. "I could... I could try to get a payday loan. Just to cover us until the unemployment comes through."
"Don't you need a job to get a payday loan?"
"They don't know I got fired," Dan said, the plan forming as he spoke. "They go by bank statements. My direct deposit from DataTech hit last Friday, before... before everything. They'll see regular income. By the time they figure out I'm unemployed, I'll have found something new and we can pay it back."
It was a terrible plan, the kind of desperate move that desperate people made. But they were desperate people now, weren't they?
Alicia frowned. "How much interest do those places charge?"
"I don't know. Does it matter?" Dan heard the edge in his own voice and tried to soften it. "We need internet. Jacob needs it for school. I need it to find work. You need it for your clients. We don't have a choice."
"Dad—" Jacob started.
"Go get dressed, buddy," Alicia said gently. "Your dad's going to fix this so that you can log into your class."
After Jacob retreated to his room, Alicia looked at Dan with an expression he couldn't quite read. Worry? Disappointment? Fear?
"How are we going to pay back a payday loan?" she asked.
"I'll find a job," Dan said, trying to sound more confident than he felt. "I'm applying everywhere. Something will come through. It has to."
Alicia nodded slowly, but Dan could see she didn't believe him any more than he believed himself. She walked over and kissed his forehead, a gesture that felt more like forgiveness than affection.
"I love you," she said. "And we'll figure this out. We always do."
"I love you too," Dan replied. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry about all of this."
"It's not your fault," Alicia said, but they both knew that didn't make it any better.
Twenty minutes later, Dan was in his Honda Civic, driving toward the CheckMate Loans office just down 285 in Englewood. He'd showered quickly, brushed his teeth three times to get rid of the beer taste, and thrown on jeans and a button-up shirt to look more employable. The low fuel light was on, a cheerful orange reminder that he had maybe twenty miles left in the tank.
The payday loan office was exactly what Dan had expected: a strip mall storefront sandwiched between a nail salon and a vape shop, with bars on the windows and a neon sign that said "FAST CASH" in letters that probably looked hopeful to some people and predatory to others. Dan parked in the nearly empty lot—it was 8:30 AM on a Monday, not peak desperation hours yet—and sat in his car for a minute, gathering his courage.
He'd never done this before. Never borrowed from one of these places. It felt like crossing a line, like admitting he'd failed at being an adult.
Inside, the office smelled like industrial cleaner and desperation. The floors were linoleum that might have been white once but was now a dingy yellow-gray. The fluorescent lights overhead buzzed and flickered, making everything look slightly sickly. A woman sat behind bulletproof glass at the counter, looking like she'd seen every variation of human failure the city had to offer and was no longer impressed by any of it.
"Help you?" she asked without looking up from her computer.
"I need a short-term loan," Dan said, his voice coming out smaller than he'd intended.
The woman slid a clipboard through the slot in the glass. "Fill this out. I'll need to see your last three bank statements and a recent pay stub."
Dan took the clipboard to one of the plastic chairs that lined the wall—the kind of chairs that had probably been beige once but were now an indeterminate color that suggested they'd absorbed years of anxiety and regret. He filled out the form with information that felt like lies even though it was technically true: Name: Daniel Patrick Abernathy. Address: 2847 Ridge View Drive, Apt 2B. Employer: DataTech Solutions.
That last one made him pause. Was DataTech still his employer? Technically, his termination wouldn't be official until Friday when his final paycheck processed. So yes, he supposed, for the next four days he could still claim to work there.
He pulled out his phone and logged into his bank account to print his statements. Three months of direct deposits from DataTech every other Friday like clockwork. To the payday loan company, this would look like steady employment, reliable income, a safe bet.
They wouldn't see the credit card debt. The overdue bills. The savings account that had been drained. The fact that in four days, those direct deposits would stop forever.
Dan brought the completed form back to the window. The woman took it, scanned it with practiced efficiency, and started typing on her computer.
"How much are you looking to borrow?" she asked.
Dan did quick math in his head. Internet bill: $147. He should probably get a little extra for gas and groceries. "Three hundred dollars?"
More typing. More scanning of his bank statements. The woman's expression didn't change—she'd probably seen worse than Dan's financial situation before breakfast.
"I can do two-fifty," she said finally. "Two weeks, twenty-five percent interest. You'll owe us three hundred twelve dollars and fifty cents on the due date."
Dan's stomach clenched. Sixty-two dollars in interest for a two-week loan. That was highway robbery. But Jacob needed internet for school. He needed internet to find work. They didn't have a choice.
"Okay," he said.
"I'll need your car title as collateral," the woman added, sliding another form through the slot.
"My car title?" Dan felt his chest tighten. "Why?"
"Standard procedure for amounts over two hundred dollars. Don't worry, you get it back when you pay off the loan."
Dan thought about his Honda Civic sitting in the parking lot. It was a 2014, had 143,000 miles on it, needed new brake pads, and made a weird rattling sound when he accelerated too fast. It was worth maybe four thousand dollars if he was lucky. But without it, how would he get to job interviews?
Without internet, Jacob would miss school. And if Dan couldn't find work soon, losing the car would be the least of their problems.
He pulled his registration from his wallet and signed where the woman pointed. The pen felt heavy in his hand, like he was signing away more than just a piece of paper.
Ten minutes later, Dan walked out of CheckMate Loans with $250 in cash and a sick feeling in his stomach. The money felt dirty in his pocket, like evidence of failure. He got back in his Honda and sat there for a moment, staring at the steering wheel.
Two weeks. He had two weeks to find a job that would pay him enough to cover a $312.50 loan payment plus rent plus utilities plus everything else. Two weeks to dig himself out of the hole that kept getting deeper.
The low fuel light glowed orange on the dashboard, reminding him that he still needed gas. Dan checked his phone: 9:14 AM. Jacob's online class started at 8:30. He was already late getting the internet turned back on.
He needed to get to the bank to deposit the cash so he could pay the internet bill online. His bank was about four miles away, in Greenwood Village. Dan started the car and pulled out of the parking lot, deciding to cut through the wealthy neighborhood instead of taking the highway. It would be faster, and right now every minute mattered.
Cherry Hills Village was one of those old Denver enclaves where billionaires had driven out middle-class families, replacing modest homes with sprawling monuments to success. It had a golf course, country club, and huge mansions behind wrought-iron gates.
The houses were absurd. Not just big, but grotesque in their size and elegance. Mediterranean villas with terracotta roofs. Georgian colonials with white columns. Modern glass-and-steel structures that looked like they belonged in an architecture magazine. Each one sat on at least an acre of perfectly manicured lawn, with a long driveway leading to luxury.
Dan drove past a house with a ten-car garage—ten cars!—and felt a bitter surge of resentment. These people probably had never worried about payday loans or overdue internet bills. They probably bought new cars when the old ones got scratched. They probably had swimming pools and home theaters and wine cellars and all the things that Dan would never have.
He was passing a particularly ostentatious mansion right next to the golf course—something that looked like a Georgian palace had mated with a modern art museum, all white columns and floor-to-ceiling windows—when the Honda started to cough.
The engine sputtered. Caught. Sputtered again.
"No," Dan said out loud. "No, no, no. Come on. Not now."
But the car had its own opinion about the matter. The engine gave one final, apologetic wheeze and died completely, leaving Dan coasting on momentum. He managed to guide the Honda to the curb before it rolled to a complete stop, right in front of the mansion's ornate wrought-iron gate.
Dan sat there for a moment, hands gripping the steering wheel, trying not to scream. The low fuel light mocked him from the dashboard. Of course he'd run out of gas. Of course this would happen right now, right here, in front of the biggest mansion he had ever seen in his life.
He turned the key. The engine cranked but wouldn't catch.
He tried again. Nothing.
"SHIT!" Dan slammed his hand against the dashboard. "Shit shit shit!" He hit it again, harder. "MOTHER FUCKER! PIECE OF SHIT!"
A movement caught his eye. Dan looked up to see an elderly man standing at the mansion's gate, leaning against the ironwork. He was wearing expensive-looking silk pajamas—blue with some kind of fancy pattern that had probably cost more than Dan's entire wardrobe—and puffing on an ornate meerschaum pipe that looked like it belonged in a museum. He was watching Dan with an expression of mild amusement.
Dan felt his face flush with embarrassment. Great. Just great. Some billionaire had just watched him have a complete meltdown in front of their house.
"You need some help?" the old man called out.
Dan rolled down his window. The man was probably in his seventies, with white hair and a neatly trimmed beard. He had that look that wealthy older men got—well-fed, well-rested, like he'd never worried about money a day in his life.
"Sorry," Dan said, trying to regain some dignity. "I just... I ran out of gas."
"Well, you're in luck!" The old man's face lit up with what seemed like genuine pleasure. "I have a gas can in my garage. I'd be happy to take you to get some gas."
Dan blinked. "Really? Are you sure?"
"Absolutely! Just give me a moment to change out of my pajamas." The man gestured toward the massive house behind him. "I'm Robert Forrester, by the way."
"Dan Abernathy." Dan got out of his car, still not quite believing this was happening. Rich people didn't usually help broke people. They usually pretended broke people didn't exist. "I really appreciate this, Mr. Forrester."
"Happy to help! And please, call me Robert." The old man smiled warmly. "Come on in while I change. No point sitting out here in the cold."
The gate began to swing open with a soft mechanical hum. Dan hesitated for just a second—there was something almost too convenient about this, too perfect, a wealthy stranger offering help exactly when Dan needed it most. But he was tired and stressed and desperate, and the old man seemed genuinely kind.
Dan followed Robert Forrester through the gate, up the curved driveway made of some kind of expensive stone, toward the most beautiful house he'd ever seen outside of magazines.
The front of the mansion was even more impressive up close. The driveway curved around a fountain—an actual fountain with water cascading down three tiers of carved stone. The lawn was perfect, each blade of grass the exact same height, emerald green even though it was late autumn. There were flower beds with late-season roses and perfectly sculpted hedges and a Japanese maple tree that looked like it had been positioned by an artist.
The house itself was a study in understated elegance. White stone, tall windows, a massive oak front door with stained glass panels that caught the morning light and threw rainbows across the marble steps. It was the kind of house that whispered "old money" rather than screaming "new rich."
"This is... wow," Dan said, unable to come up with anything more eloquent. "This is incredible."
Forrester beamed. "Thank you. I've been very fortunate in life. Worked hard, made some smart investments. This old place has been in my family for three generations."
They reached the front door, and Forrester pulled out a key from his pajama pocket. Dan noticed the key was old-fashioned, brass, the kind you'd see in an antique shop. It seemed fitting for a house like this.
"Come on in!" Robert Forrester said cheerfully, pushing open the door and gesturing for Dan to enter.
Dan stepped through the doorway, and for a moment, he forgot about his broken-down car and his unpaid bills and his unemployment and everything else that was wrong with his life.
Because he had just entered paradise.