I Thanked My Aunt For The Bicycle She Gave Me, But She Replied, “I Actually Gave You A Mercedes-Benz, You Know?”

A Suspicious Gift of Junk

My consciousness drifted back 10 days earlier. It was on a Monday in November, with a cold winter wind blowing outside my office.

My workplace was wrapped as usual in a sterile, inorganic silence. I was deeply focused on analysing a complex international money laundering scheme spread across multiple monitors.

That silence was broken by the dull vibration of my smartphone. The name on the screen was my sister’s, Emma.

“Hey, Tracy, about Thanksgiving this year.” Her voice, coming through the speaker, sounded oddly buoyant and unnaturally cheerful.

“You said you’ve got tons of work piled up, right? So you don’t have to push yourself to come back here for Thanksgiving this year. Mom also said this is an important time for Tracy’s career, so we should let her rest.”

“Plane tickets are expensive anyway. Use that money for yourself.”

I took my fingers off the keyboard. It was the first time in my life Emma had ever worried about my job; for 33 years, she had never once spent time or consideration on anyone but herself.

“I can adjust my schedule. I’ll talk to Aunt Sandra directly.” I replied.

“No, she’s apparently super busy right now anyway. That’s how it is. We’ll handle things here, so you just relax over there, okay? Love you!”

The call ended abruptly. For a while, I stared at the darkened screen.

Each of her words lingered in my mind like the kind of inconsistent data I deal with at work, leaving behind a quiet but persistent dissonance.

The very next day, a large delivery truck pulled up in front of my apartment building.

“Miss Tracy Irving, correct? This delivery is from Miss Kathy Irving.”

Feeling uneasy, I went to receive it. What was placed in front of me was not a gift box but a bicycle.

No, calling it a bicycle felt far too generous. It looked like a piece of junk salvaged straight from a landfill.

The entire frame was covered in stubborn rust. The handlebars were warped, the chain had completely come off, the front basket was dented in multiple places, and the tires were flat, crushed beyond hope.

Attached to the base of the handlebars was a card written in my mother’s handwriting.

“To Tracy, Aunt Sandra has been worried about your health since you sit all day, so she decided to give you a bicycle she used to love. It’s a bit old, but it should be enough to get your body moving, don’t you think? Don’t waste your aunt’s kindness. Use it gratefully.”

I stopped just short of touching the rusted metal. My aunt is an extremely strict woman, but she also values only the very highest quality.

Would she really give her niece a bicycle so decrepit it felt downright dangerous, all for my health? And then there was Emma’s almost obsessive insistence that I not come home.

A quiet but inextinguishable flame of suspicion ignited inside me. I immediately rebooked the earliest available flight and began preparing to return to my parents’ house to see with my own eyes what they were trying to hide.