Instead, my parents exchanged a glance and laughed.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Mom said.
“But honestly,” Dad added with a smirk, “I think we all know why your parents dropped you off at the orphanage.”
I stared at him in disbelief. “Are you serious?”
“It’s a joke, Jen!” Dad said dismissively. “Jordan doesn’t care, right? A little guy like you probably—”
“Stop. Right now,” I snapped.
Because if he had finished that sentence, I honestly think I would have flipped the entire table.
Mom muttered that I was overreacting, and an icy silence settled between us.
That was probably the moment I understood they would never truly accept Jordan. In their eyes, he would always be an embarrassment to tolerate, someone to crop out of photos, the punchline to every joke.
As the years passed, I slowly distanced myself from them.
I stopped calling as much. I stopped visiting. Every conversation came wrapped in another insult disguised as humor, another reminder that the man I loved would never measure up for them.
