“I know,” I said. “I’m not saying it wasn’t difficult. I’m saying you made a decision, and then the story that followed that decision wasn’t accurate, and now you’re asking me for twenty-five thousand dollars — which is almost all of my savings — using the same reasoning that says my savings are available because I’m capable and independent.”
He didn’t say anything.
My mother said, “We thought you were okay.”
“I know you did,” I said. “I made it easier to think that by not correcting you. I’m correcting you now.”
Olivia, who had been very quiet, said, “I want to understand something. When you told us Nora had offered to help — when you told Ethan that — was that because she’d said something to you, or because you’d decided she would?”
The silence that followed was a different kind of silence.
My mother said, “I thought she’d want to be part of it.”
Olivia said, “That’s not an offer.”
It was three words. They landed very quietly.
My father cleared his throat. He said, “Linda.”
My mother looked at him.
He said, “I think we made some decisions that we didn’t handle right.”
This was not a polished speech. My father is not a polished speech person. He’s the kind of person who says things in compact sentences and then sits with them, and what he said next was compact and he sat with it: “We took money we’d promised Nora and used it for Ethan, and then we told a version of it that made it sound better than it was. That’s what happened.”