We got through the salad. We got through most of the roast. My father refilled glasses twice, which he only does when he’s trying to create an atmosphere.
Then my mother put down her fork and said, “We’ve been thinking about how to make the wedding really special. And we want everyone to be part of it.”
I reached for my water glass.
“The venue they love is forty-eight thousand dollars for the whole package,” she said. “Catering, space, coordination. Ethan and Olivia can put in twenty-three thousand. So there’s a gap of twenty-five thousand.”
She was looking at me in the particular way she looks at me when she’s already decided something.
“We thought, since you’ve been so good with your savings, you’d want to help close that.”
Twenty-five thousand dollars.
I have twenty-eight thousand dollars in savings. I built it over eight years, starting from nothing, which is what I had when I graduated at twenty-four after six years of community college, health administration courses, night shifts, and roughly four hundred bus rides I never want to think about again.
Twenty-five thousand dollars would leave me with three thousand. Three thousand dollars is not an emergency fund. Three thousand dollars is a bad month.
I said, “Can I ask a question?”
My mother smiled like the answer was already settled. “Of course.”
“When I needed help with school,” I said, “you told me I was independent. That I preferred to do it myself.” I kept my voice even. “Wasn’t that the story?”