© Bruce Goodman 8 August 2015
Jacqueline and Carlton had three sons; Darcy, Caxton, and Pedro. The three sons were all grown up and married. Jacqueline and Carlton didn’t have a great deal of money. They did have money in fact, but they’d lent it out to their three sons. With young families, the sons needed to have a house to live in. Lending them money to buy a house each was Jacqueline and Carlton’s way of giving them a head start in life. Jacqueline and Carlton lived off the minimal amount of interest that their sons paid.
Then Carlton upped and died. His will “forgave” the debts owed by the sons. Jacqueline could no longer live on interest paid because there were no longer loans.
“That’s fine,” thought Jacqueline, “my sons will help me out I’m sure.”
Clearly, she’d never read Shakespeare’s King Lear.
Weave a Web 
How sad. But well written story
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Thanks!
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I’m glad I’ve only got daughters!
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LOL! So did King Lear have only daughters!!! “How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is, to have a thankless child,” said Lear.
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Neither a borrower nor a lender be… Well, sometimes that doesn’t work, but I never give family anything in the way of money I expect to get back. Feel sorry for people who do, as it seems always to end badly.
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Agreed!
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Hey Bruce, nice story, reminds me of a story my father told me many years ago. In Marathi. I am trying to best transcribe here. Culturally appropriate for India but universally true. A parent can give their offspring their plate of food but never the seat they sit on to eat. Am I making sense?
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Yes – it makes much sense!
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Greed is the speed by which royalty runs.
In her growing madness, Jacqueline published her secret diary revealing the illegitimacy of her three sons, thereby shaming them into a downward spiral of divorce, unemployment and lowly status of social outcasts. While she grew comfortable into her new title of New York Times Bestseller!
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Yes indeed! She knew they were her husband’s but wasn’t sure if they were hers. Once she established that they were not hers she married each in turn and re-inherited their fortunes. The plot thickens.
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But my this flash fiction is unfolding into a full soap! How could she have been uncertain of her maternal claim?
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Her husband was black, as were the sons, and she was white. Duh!
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Hence the BIG secret revealed in her diary: she was a surrogate mother and that’s how the young couple amassed their fortune. But the paying mother died in a car crash before Jacqueline gave birth to triplets.
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Now she’s her former husband’s daughter-in-law.
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Now we’re almost back to “I’m my own grandpa”!
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This tale is surely set in the Deep South.
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I know this is beside the point, but I like the names of the sons….Darcy, Caxton, and…Pedro?
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The names are taken from the local paper’s daily obituary column – I’m not responsible for the order in which the Fates cut the threads!
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