After Dad died, the bills had started piling up. Life insurance that wasn’t quite enough. A mortgage that didn’t care about grief. Medical debts from treatments that hadn’t worked. Mom had called me six months into my first deployment, her voice small and scared in a way I’d never heard before.
“Ethan, I don’t know what to do. The bank called again. I might lose the house.”
I’d been in a forward operating base in Afghanistan, pulling guard duty in 120-degree heat, when that call came through. I’d walked away from my post—technically a violation, but the sergeant had understood—and found a quiet corner behind the HESCO barriers.
“Don’t worry,” I’d told her. “I’ll take care of it.”
And I had. I’d set up automatic payments from my account to hers. Electric bill, water, car insurance, mortgage payments. Whatever she needed. It wasn’t much at first—a couple hundred here, a few hundred there. Military pay wasn’t great, but I didn’t need much. I lived on base, ate at the DFAC, didn’t have a car or a life that required money.
