Nearby conversations dipped. I felt the room notice us all at once. A server froze halfway through pouring sparkling water into a flute at the next table. Someone behind me whispered, “Oh my God.”
My mother pressed a hand to her pearls as if I were the one humiliating her.
“You think you can disobey me after everything we’ve done for you?” my father said.
He was breathing harder now. I could see it in the movement of his chest under his blazer. He held the torn diploma like evidence.
I stared at the pieces, and a strange calm settled over me.
Everything we’ve done for you.
It was one of his favorite phrases, broad enough to cover every favor I’d never asked for and vague enough to erase the ledger I’d kept since childhood. The hours I’d spent babysitting Kate when she was somehow too emotional after each failed launch to handle practical things. The thankless family errands. The Christmases when my gifts were “sensible” and hers were joyful. The year I worked two campus jobs and skipped spring break because my mother had told me, over the phone and in a tone made of pity, that Kate was having a hard time and they’d needed to help her with rent.
“Everything you’ve done for me?” I asked.
I kept my tone soft. Soft was a weapon in a room like that.
“You mean the student loans I took out myself? The part-time jobs I worked while Kate got unlimited credit cards? That everything?”
