Buddy Poached Lonely Seniors Who Promised Me Their House

When he found out I was cooking three meals a day for a group of old people, and that they'd sign their homes over to me after they died, my buddy's face went dark.

Evan Sullivan, all you do is cook for them every day, and you have the nerve to want their houses? On top of charging them for groceries? Since when are you this greedy?

Once he'd confirmed every one of the seniors could still take care of themselves, he dropped the act entirely.

He pulled me and all the seniors into one group chat, then laid it on thick: "To all of you, I only just found out that on top of your three meals a day, someone's been charging you a separate grocery fee."

"It's just a little meat and vegetables. How much can that really cost?"

"Your pensions aren't much to begin with. So starting today, I've decided to cook your three meals a day for free. All I ask is that when your time comes, you leave your homes to me, just as a keepsake."

The seniors, who a moment ago had been confused, all flipped sides, flooding the chat with thumbs-up stickers one after another.

Seeing more and more people move to his side, my buddy sent me a private message.

"I'm sorry, Evan. I never expected everyone to accept me like this. I guess you just weren't being fair to them before!"

I held it in for a long time before I managed not to laugh out loud.

I only hoped he'd take all these old princes and princesses off my hands. High returns on the surface, sure, but the whole thing was one trap after another.

...

Once it was settled that all thirteen seniors would be under his care, my buddy Geoffrey Roman got so excited he posted on his social media feed.

"Thirteen houses, locked in. Life as a landlord is going to be sweet from here on out."

He could already picture himself lying back and collecting rent. What he'd overlooked was the one condition for those thirteen houses landing in his hands: every one of these seniors had to be dead first.

And judging by how healthy they all were, well, that was going to take a while.

But I hadn't been gloating long before one of the seniors asked, all curious, in the chat: "But little Evan set a pretty high meal standard for me before. With this free deal of yours, you're not going to feed us plain greens and carrots every day, are you?"

The moment that went out, the seniors who'd just firmly picked Geoffrey started wavering again.

"Say what you want, but little Evan charged us extra for groceries every day, and he never once cut corners on the food."

That was Hilda Swanson, who lived in the unit above mine and had been the one to first float the whole elder-care plan.

At first I'd just been cooking at home for myself. She caught the smell, and come mealtime she'd show up at my door like a guest.

After I'd politely shown her out three times, she pitched it: I'd take care of her three meals a day, and when she died, the house in her name would be mine.

I didn't want to wade into that mess, so I politely walked her back out.

But then she brought a whole group of seniors and worked the emotional angle on me, and watching them plead with me, one hunched old body after another, I finally went soft.

Officially, I charged them forty-five dollars a day for groceries.

In reality, what I sank into it each month ran far past that.

For fish and seafood they'd only eat red snapper, the crab had to be king crab legs, and even the cheapest abalone had to be jumbo scallops.

Even the greens had me up before dawn to catch the first bus out to a rural farmstead, buying only the kind grown without growth stimulants or pesticides.

Sure enough, when Geoffrey was slow to say anything, someone started to waver.

Hilda Swanson was the first to message me.

"Little Evan, let's just treat the group chat as a joke. But your buddy has a point. Splitting hairs over money with a group of old folks who've willed you their inheritance, that's not a good look."

"Here's what we'll do. We'll give you five dollars a meal, same meal standard as before, and we'll still leave you our houses. What do you say?"

Looking at the message, my brow twitched, and I typed back fast: "I say no."

A hot potato I'd finally managed to throw off. There was no reason on earth to catch it again.

Hilda Swanson was no easy character. That understanding came to me after a year of looking after her.

She'd slipped in the shower once and called me.

I didn't pick up in time, but the moment I saw it I knew something had happened.

I rushed straight to her place, got her to the hospital, and covered the medical bills without a second's hesitation.

She'd held my hand then, eyes brimming with tears. "Evan, if it weren't for you, this old woman might not be here."

She'd praised me to the skies that day. But later, while I was helping her clear the storage on her phone, I stumbled onto a chat between her and a friend.

"Young people these days never put their phones down, do they? Bet he can't wait for me to die so he can inherit my estate. Good thing I'm too tough to go!"

A chill crept up from the soles of my feet and sank straight into my chest.

Right then I wanted to walk away and be done with it. But faced with the other kind, gentle old people, I couldn't bring myself to harden my heart.

So I kept things civil with Hilda Swanson on the surface. Now that my buddy was willing to take over, nothing could have suited me better.

Hilda Swanson didn't reply again, but my buddy posted something in the chat, and the mood in there changed at once.

"Meat and vegetables both, balanced nutrition, guaranteed."

Then he posted his nutritionist certificate in the group chat.

"Rest easy, everyone. I'm a professional. I'll get all of you in good shape, every one of you living to a hundred."

A few sweet words, and the old folks in the chat lit up at once.

"Oh, this is wonderful. I've been too embarrassed to say it. One time I ate a meal Evan made and I was throwing up and running to the toilet all day. But he'd put in the effort, even if the result was nothing, so I held my tongue."

That was Grandpa Gilbert talking, the greediest mouth and the pickiest of the bunch.

He never watched what he ate. Last year during the holidays I bought fresh blue crab so the seniors could have a taste.

When I dropped off his meal, he insisted I leave, then sat there and polished off three whole crabs by himself.

Two other seniors didn't even get any that day, and never mind that. Crab is cold in nature and his stomach was already weak. He got so bad that day he was dehydrated.

If I hadn't rushed him to the hospital in time, it doesn't bear thinking about.

I just never imagined that his own mistake back then would now become ammunition against me.

Three years I took care of them, and now every line of praise they heaped on my buddy landed like broken glass in my chest, driven in until I bled.

I took a deep breath and told myself: turn around now, and it isn't too late.

Five years of heart and money already wasted, and now someone was taking the mess off my hands. I couldn't have asked for more.

While all of that churned inside me, Geoffrey came straight to me.

His first line was, "Mrs. Swanson says you've got the weekly menu previews and the supplier list. Buddy! They're not letting you handle their care anymore anyway, so don't let it go to waste on strangers. Just send it all my way, saves me from having to collect and sort it one by one."

I looked at how entitled he sounded, and I could only find it funny.

But I still gave him the weekly rotation of dishes, none repeating, along with where to buy every single ingredient.

While I was at it, I transferred over the seniors' meal funds they'd prepaid to me for the month.

He didn't hesitate for even a second. He claimed the money right away.

He fired back a message: "Fist to the chest. Thanks, buddy. Once the rent starts coming in, first meal's on me."

But the moment he saw the ingredients and the suppliers, his face changed on the spot.

"Evan, who do you think you're kidding? This pile of ingredients runs a hundred grand a month. You were paying out of your own pocket to play charity?"

Reading my buddy's message, I let out a bitter laugh.

Paying out of pocket to do a good deed. That was exactly it.

I didn't need the money from those few houses. I just thought of my grandparents, gone too soon, and couldn't help the longing that welled up.

Now, watching their messages, my throat itched with disgust. It had all been thrown to the dogs. They weren't worth it.

"Buddy, this is a private chat now, quit holding out on me. Where'd you buy the prepackaged meals? Just send me the link."

In the group chat they were still eagerly working out how much money I'd supposedly skimmed off them over the years.

"Geoff's got it right, that kid. He took our houses, so he shouldn't have been taking our meal money too. Wanting it from both endsthat's an ungrateful snake."

I wanted to throw the purchase records in their faces, but reality told me: absolutely not.

Better to get out early, while they still hadn't come to their senses, before they latched onto me again like a plaster that wouldn't peel off.

I steadied myself and typed back to my buddy: "I can send you my old cooking videos. Whether it's prepackaged food or not, you'll see for yourself."

He went quiet. I don't know whether he'd caught on.

But I wasn't going to give him the chance to dump the whole thing back on me.

What I didn't expect was that Geoffrey didn't come back to say anything more.

He just went on chatting with the seniors in the group as usual, until someone pressed him for the next day's menu.

"Geoff, post tomorrow's meals for us."

Mrs. Swanson was the hardest of the group to fool, and the shrewdest.

She only believed what she saw with her own eyes.

Geoffrey's tone didn't change in the slightest. He answered as sweetly as ever: "Let's make tomorrow a surprise, ma'am. Knowing ahead every single day takes all the fun out of it."

Mrs. Swanson still had her doubts, but the others were only too eager to play along. "Sure! I've heard for ages that surprise boxes are the trendy thing with young people. We old bones have Geoff to thanknow we get to try it too."

The flattery went to Geoffrey's head. He thumped his chest and promised he'd make sure everyone ate and drank well.

Mrs. Swanson said nothing more. She only sent me one more message: "I'll give you ten more a day. Fifty-five, would that do?"

I didn't reply. I just blocked and deleted her.

The next morning at breakfast, that group chat blew up.

At eight in the morning, every last one of the old folks was hammering Geoff with mentions in the group chat.

"Geoff, it's eight already. Where's breakfast?"

"Geoff, we're starving over here. What's going on with you?"

They kept it up from eight all the way to ten, and Geoff still hadn't shown his face.

That was when they started to panic. A few of them had low blood sugar and couldn't take it, so they went digging through their cupboards for white sugar and ate it straight.

Some of them had started to regret it, and before long they were sniping at each other.

"Evan was doing just fine. You people had to go and switch."

"You've got some nerve saying that. You're the one who started it, saying it was unfair that Evan charged for the food."

My private account was still in the group, so they had no idea it was me.

That was why they kept passing the blame around, each one telling the next to go coax me back.

And just as they were all getting ready to call me, Geoff finally surfaced.

"It's eleven now. We're getting started on lunch here. Sit tight, everyone."

That one line set off a wave of them, voice messages rolling in one after another.

"Isn't it three meals a day? How is it lunch already?"

"We're old. We can't go without breakfast!"

"Evan never treated us like this."

After that message, the group went quiet for a long while.

They regretted it, that much was obvious. To me it was just funny.

Because last winter, when the roads were icy and hard to walk, I'd carried breakfast out at eight in the morning against a freezing wind and arrived ten minutes later than usual.

And this crowd of old folks turned on me, all of them saying I couldn't wait for them to die.

I tried to calm them down for the longest time, and it did no good. In the end Mrs. Swanson cracked me on the temple with her cane and the blood came right away.

Not one of them tried to comfort me. They just watched me, cold-eyed, while she spat on the ground and said, "Serves you right."

My heart felt like it had been carved out and left in the wind, and in the end I pressed a hand to my forehead and went to a nearby hospital to get it bandaged.

Calling the police did nothing.

They were long past the age where anyone could hold them accountable. They'd just sit down on the ground, slap their thighs, and start wailing, and whoever came couldn't do a thing about them.

Back then I already wanted out of this thankless job I was paying for out of my own pocket.

But the moment I brought it up, they were crying and carrying on again, taking turns kneeling at my door for a solid two weeks straight.

They had me pegged: a young man living alone, with no one to back him up.

Even the neighbors started looking at me strangely, and that was when it hit me that getting on a sinking ship is easy, but getting off is hard.

Thinking about it, I gripped my phone.

I couldn't just sit here and take it. Once Geoff stopped caring for them, they'd come right back to make my life miserable.

Then an idea came to me. I edited together clips of myself caring for them day to day, cooking their meals, and posted it online.

I didn't spare the money either, sinking ten thousand into promoting it. Fifteen minutes after I posted, it blew up. Plenty of people praised me for being a good man, and some called me a bleeding heart.

But that wasn't what I was after. Not until someone reached out to me.

They wanted me to be an in-home nutritionist for an elderly man, five visits a week to cook, fifty thousand a month.

I looked the old man up right away, and once I'd confirmed he had power and connections, I said yes without a second's hesitation.

I had money, but no power. In the eyes of those thirteen old people, I was nothing more than a golden hen.

Now I'd found a big tree to lean on. So what would become of them?

I went to open the group chat, only to find that after my good buddy delivered lunch, the whole thing had blown up.

One of the seniors posted a photo of lunch: a small helping of yellowing greens, three chunks of plain boiled chicken breast with no seasoning at all, and two bowls of white rice.

"Geoff, this is what you call meat and vegetables? Didn't Evan tell you what our old meal standard was?"

Geoffrey replied with a half-hearted line: "It is meat and vegetables. This kind of pairing is for your own good."

"Evan always fed you cheap prepackaged meals. That's already done a number on your bodies. When you get old, too much nutrition just piles up because you can't metabolize it."

Hilda Swanson couldn't hold back any longer. She fired off a voice message: "You're going to starve us into malnutrition. Feed us this and we'll be lucky to make it to next year."

And before that storm settled, another broke. Grandpa Gilbert dropped a video into the group chat.

In the video, Geoffrey was at the farmers' market picking through the rotten vegetable leaves people had thrown outhe'd gathered a whole big bagful.

And in his other hand he was carrying a big bag of loose, frozen chicken breast.

The seniors lost it.

"Geoff, have some conscience in how you do things. Feeding these old bones stuff like thataren't you afraid people will curse you behind your back?"

"No conscience at all, you wretch. I told you Evan was good, but no, you all had to switch."

Hilda Swanson was shaking with anger: "Either you improve our meals, or we switch back to Evan."

Geoffrey scoffed and sent an eye-roll emoji: "Evan's already been offended past the point of no return by all of you. Go find him, then! Fine, fine, I get it. I'll improve the meals tomorrow."

"Oh, and by the wayI deliver lunch and dinner together, so don't eat it all at lunch. You'll have to heat the rest for dinner."

For a moment the group chat was one long wail.

Geoffrey's whole routine had me laughing so hard I could barely breathe. Truly, it takes a scoundrel to torment a scoundrel.

Except I didn't get to laugh for long, because Geoffrey came knocking.

He showed up carrying two shriveled apples, and the moment he was through the door he opened my fridge, took out a bottle of water, and started drinking.

"Evan, you really dug me one hell of a pit."

"You've spoiled these old folks' palates rotten. You've got to help me out."

"At the very least you have to take the meals back over. I won't shortchange youthree thousand a month, that's generous enough, right?"

I just pointed at the door. "Out."

Geoffrey's face went ugly at once.

"If you won't, I can just move the seniors back myself. Thirteen apartments, remember!"

I'd barely finished speaking when Geoffrey gave a cold snort and left.

At least the way he saw it now, thirteen apartments was a business that returned a fortune on nothing.

But I never imagined he could be shameless to this degree.

At three in the morning, deep in the night, Geoffrey called me: "Mrs. Swanson upstairs from you has an upset stomach. Go buy some medicine and take it up to her."

"Why should I? Aren't those apartments yours now?"

I sneered and threw it right back at him.

"It's just running an errand, doing a favor. Do you have to be so calculating about it?"

I hung up without a second's hesitation and left him to sort out his own mess.

But I didn't expect Geoffrey to just post it in the group chat.

"Everyone, I only handle your two meals a day. That doesn't include running errands or delivering medicine. That's a separate charge."

The moment he sent it, Hilda Swansonawake with her stomach hurtingblew up: "We gave you our apartments precisely so you'd care for us in our old age. What kind of attitude is this?"

Geoffrey didn't reply. He just let Hilda Swanson curse him out in the group chat half the night.

I stopped paying attention after that. What I didn't expect was that a week later, two police officers would knock on my door.