It was the most useful thing anyone said at that meeting.
## The Forty Thousand
After the meeting, my parents and I had a separate conversation — just the three of us, after Adam had driven home. It was a quieter conversation, the kind that happens when the performing-for-the-group energy has dissipated.
“Tell me about the forty thousand,” I said.
My father explained: twenty thousand was in a savings account they’d been holding for emergencies. Twenty thousand was in a money market that they’d been rolling over for years, earmarked in their minds for something they hadn’t quite named. Together it was the reserve they were keeping rather than giving to Adam.
“Is that enough for a deposit and first and last on a rental?” I asked.
My father looked at my mother. “Depends on what we rent,” he said.
“Let me show you something,” I said.
I had spent two evenings that week looking at rental listings in the area — not to build a case, but because I wanted to know what was actually possible rather than arguing in the abstract. There were two-bedroom apartments within eight miles of my house in the range of sixteen hundred to two thousand a month. There were a couple of smaller one-bedroom units under fourteen hundred. There were a few over-fifty-five communities with reasonable monthly rents that included some amenities and the practical convenience of single-floor living.
The deposit and first-and-last on a two-bedroom would run four to six thousand dollars. Manageable against their forty-thousand reserve.