Chương 5
The coffee tasted like burnt cardboard.
I drank it anyway.
At eight seventeen, my father called again.
I answered.
“Athena.”
His voice sounded rough.
“Dad.”
“Your mother says you’re causing problems with the vendors.”
“I spoke to them.”
“You canceled the payments.”
“I withdrew automatic authorization.”
“That’s the same thing.”
“No, it isn’t.”
He sighed.
I could picture him pinching the bridge of his nose, the gesture he used whenever another person’s behavior inconvenienced him.
“The wedding is over.”
“Yes.”
“So why are you doing this now?”
I looked at the invoice email.
“Because now the bills are due.”
He was quiet.
Then he said, “We agreed you’d cover the wedding.”
“No.”
“That was the understanding.”
“The understanding was that I would cover deposits and you and Mom would reimburse the rest.”
“Athena, come on.”
There it was again.
The family’s favorite substitute for an actual argument.
Come on.
Be reasonable.
Be useful.
Do what you have always done.
“I want the thirty-eight thousand paid by the people who had the wedding.”
My father let out a humorless breath.
“We don’t have thirty-eight thousand dollars.”
I already knew that.
The surprise was hearing him finally say it.
“Then why did you spend it?”
My father did not answer for several seconds.
When he finally spoke, the irritation had gone out of his voice.
“We thought there would be more time.”
“More time for what?”
“To move things around.”
I stared into the hotel coffee as if something useful might surface in it.
“What things?”
“Money.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“Athena, I’m not discussing our finances over the phone.”
“You’re asking me for thirty-eight thousand dollars over the phone.”
His breathing changed.
I knew that sound too.
Dad had never shouted the way Mom did.
He became quieter when he was angry, forcing everyone else to lean toward him.
“We gave Brooke a beautiful wedding.”
“You did.”
“She’s your sister.”
“I’m aware.”
“Then I don’t understand what you’re trying to accomplish.”
I put the paper cup on the windowsill.
“I’m trying not to pay thirty-eight thousand dollars for a wedding I was thrown out of.”
“You weren’t thrown out.”
I almost laughed.
“What would you call it?”
“Your mother handled it badly.”
“You watched.”
“I didn’t know what was happening.”
“You looked directly at me.”
“I was across the room.”
“Dad.”
He went silent.
That silence had protected him for decades.
Mom could be cruel because Dad specialized in being absent while standing three feet away.
When Brooke and I fought as children, he read the newspaper.
When Mom accused me of humiliating the family by moving overseas, he washed dishes.
When I sent twelve thousand dollars after his contracting business nearly collapsed, he thanked me with a thumbs-up emoji.
He had built an entire personality around not being the person who caused the problem.
“I should’ve come outside,” he said.
The admission was so unexpected that I had no immediate response.
“Yes.”
“I didn’t.”
“No.”
“Your mother was already upset.”
“So you chose the person who would punish you if you disagreed.”
“That’s not fair.”
“It’s accurate.”
He exhaled through his nose.
“You always have to make everything so clinical.”
That was another family accusation.
Athena used big words.
Athena made lists.
Athena kept receipts.
Athena remembered what people had promised.
In a family built on emotional improvisation, documentation was apparently a character defect.
“What happened to the money?” I asked.
“What money?”
“The money you were supposed to use for the wedding.”
“We had expenses.”
“What expenses?”
“This isn’t the time.”
“It became the time when you asked me to cover them.”
He said my name as if warning a dog away from traffic.
I waited.
Finally he muttered, “The business had a bad quarter.”
I closed my eyes.
Dad owned Sinclair Custom Exteriors, a small roofing and siding company that had been having bad quarters for most of my adult life.
Every few years, there was a truck that needed replacing, a customer who refused to pay, a supplier who raised prices, an employee who disappeared halfway through a job, or taxes Dad had somehow been surprised to learn existed.
“How much?”
“That’s between your mother and me.”
“Fine.”
I picked up my coffee again.
“Then the wedding bill is between you and Mom.”
“Athena.”
“I have to check out.”
“You’re leaving town?”
“My flight is this afternoon.”
“Come to the house first.”
“No.”
“Your mother wants to talk.”
“I’m sure she does.”
“We can sit down like adults.”
I looked at the clock.
For reasons I could not explain, the invitation unsettled me more than his anger.
Maybe because some part of me still associated the kitchen table in my parents’ house with negotiations I always lost.
“Not today.”
“Athena, please.”
I rubbed my thumb along the paper cup’s seam.
Dad almost never said please.
“Why?”
He hesitated.
“There are things you don’t know.”
That sentence could have been manipulation.
It probably was.
It worked anyway.
An hour later, I was driving toward the house where I had grown up.
Cedar Bluff looked smaller than I remembered.
The pharmacy where I had worked summers was now a vape store.
The Dairy Queen still leaned slightly toward the highway.
Someone had painted the old hardware store turquoise, which seemed optimistic.
I stopped at a red light beside the high school football field and watched two maintenance workers drag a hose across the grass.
Nothing about the town suggested my life had changed yesterday.
My parents lived in a brick ranch house at the end of Hawthorne Lane.
Dad’s work truck sat crooked in the driveway.
Mom’s white Lexus was beside it.
I parked at the curb instead of pulling in.
That tiny choice made my stomach tighten.
Mom opened the front door before I reached the porch.
She was wearing leggings, a pale sweater, and no makeup.
Without the champagne dress and carefully arranged hair, she looked older.
I hated that I noticed.
May you like
“You came.”
“Dad asked me to.”
