Chapter 7 - Rock Bottom
While Blythe was taking her first steps toward reclaiming her integrity, my son was plummeting into the deepest abyss of his life. Without his corporate salary, stripped of his social network, and abandoned by the high-society circles he had groveled to impress, Cullen had run out of evasions.
His luxury sports car was repossessed by the lender in mid-November, leaving him with an old, rusted station wagon he bought for five hundred dollars from a scrap yard. He was living in a damp, basement-level apartment in South Boston, working graveyard shifts as an inventory clerk at a wholesale food warehouse—lifting heavy crates of frozen fish for fourteen dollars an hour just to cover his rent and legal fees.
Arthur kept me informed, despite my insistence that I didn't want a daily ledger of Cullen’s misery. ""He’s paying his debts, Martha,"" Arthur told me during our Sunday phone check-in. ""He sold off his designer watches, his tailored suits, and his electronics. He’s living on canned soup and store-brand bread. But here’s the interesting part: he hasn't filed for bankruptcy.""
""Why not?"" I asked.
""Because bankruptcy would mean discharging the money he owes to Miles Prescott for the partnership debt. Miles offered to settle for pennies on the dollar just to close the book on him, but Cullen refused. He told Miles’s attorney that he would pay back every dime out of his own pocket if it took him thirty years.""
That revelation stayed with me for days. A man who only cares about appearances will file for bankruptcy the second the curtain falls, looking for an easy escape hatch to preserve whatever comfort he has left. But a man who chooses to carry the full weight of his ruin on his own shoulders is beginning to realize the difference between hollow pride and real responsibility.
One evening, just before Thanksgiving, a winter gale knocked out the power grid along the coast. I sat by the fireplace with a kerosene lamp, listening to the roaring Atlantic waves crashing against the seawall. Suddenly, through the howling wind, I heard the distinctive, sputtering cough of an engine dying out on the private lane.
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I grabbed my heavy flashlight and stepped out onto the porch. Through the sheets of freezing rain, I saw the rusted station wagon sitting dead near the bottom of my driveway, hazard lights blinking weakly against the darkness. A man stepped out of the driver's side, popped the hood, and stood in the downpour, coughing as steam hissed from the cracked radiator.
He had no umbrella, no raincoat, and only a thin work jacket to protect him against thirty-degree ocean winds. It was Cullen.
