Three weeks after I made the last payment on my 2022 Mazda3. I came home to an empty driveway. When I called my father, he chuckled and said, Relax, Adam. We let Travis have it. He has a kid coming. You only have yourself to worry about. Travis was my cousin. His license had been suspended. I didn't yell. I opened the folder where I kept my title paperwork and drove straight to the police station. "You let Travis have my car?" I was standing in the driveway of my townhouse outside Marietta, Georgia. Still wearing my work boots, staring at the oil stain beneath the spot where my Mazda had been parked that morning. Dad sounded almost amused. "Don't make it sound like somebody stole it." "My car is gone." "Travis needed transportation." I closed my eyes. Three weeks earlier, I had paid the final $612.48 on that car. I remembered the exact amount because I had stared at the payment confirmation for nearly a minute before taking a screenshot. Thirty-one payments. Weekend overtime. Packed lunches. Skipped vacations. Not one dollar had come from my father. Not one dollar had come from Aunt Denise, Travis's mother. Yet Dad spoke as though the Mazda had been sitting around unused, waiting for the family committee to redistribute it. "Travis can't legally drive," I said. "He's getting his license situation handled." "It was suspended." "You're always so technical about everything." That sentence told me more than the rest of the conversation. I had always been the technical one. The dependable one. The person everyone called when a printer stopped working, a bill needed explaining, or somebody needed two hundred dollars until Friday. Travis had always been the one people protected from consequences. He was twenty-eight, expecting his first child with his girlfriend, and had spent most of the previous year bouncing between jobs. Every disaster in his life arrived with an explanation. Every achievement in mine arrived with a reason I should share it. "Dad," I said quietly, "who gave you permission to take my keys?" Silence. Then his voice hardened. "I still have the spare from when you lived with me." There it was. Not a misunderstanding. Not Travis borrowing it without asking.  My father had entered my townhouse while I was at work, taken the spare key from the kitchen drawer, and handed my paid-off car to someone else. "Bring it back tonight." Dad laughed once. Adam, he's going to be a father. You're thirty-two and single. You can afford another car eventually. I looked at the empty driveway again. That patch of concrete suddenly felt like a summary of my entire relationship with him. If I had something, I could survive without it. If Travis wanted something, wanting it was apparently enough. "Okay," I said. Dad paused. He had expected a fight. "Okay?" "Yeah." Then I hung up. I went inside, opened the fireproof box in my bedroom closet, and pulled out my registration, insurance documents, purchase agreement, and the electronic title confirmation I had printed after making the final payment. Forty-five minutes later, I was sitting across from an officer at the Cobb County precinct. She compared my driver's license to the paperwork. "Vehicle is registered to you alone?" "Yes." "Did your father have permission to take it?" "No." "Did your cousin?" "No." She leaned back slightly. "Do you know where it is now?" "No." She began typing. The sound of the keyboard made the whole thing feel more real than the empty driveway had. Then she looked at me again. Are you willing to pursue charges if the investigation supports them? I thought about my father laughing. "Yes."