Which is not a strange thing to say if you’re someone who is about to marry into a family and is taking notes.
After the wedding, Olivia sent a note with the gallery link. A few weeks after that, she texted asking if I wanted to get dinner sometime — not as an event, just as two people who lived in the same city and were going to be family. I said yes. We picked a date in November.
I’m looking forward to it in a low-key way, which is the right way to look forward to dinner with a sister-in-law you’re only just beginning to know outside the context of a family dispute.
She brings tulips to Sunday dinners. That’s already something.
The Balance, Fourteen Years Later
I want to do the arithmetic clearly, because I’ve been citing numbers throughout this account and I want to be accurate.
Promised education support: thirty-six thousand dollars. This was in my parents’ savings, not in my name, not in any legal structure specific to me. They could do what they wanted with it. They redirected it to Ethan’s education and expenses.
What I actually received: nine thousand two hundred dollars in grants, spread across six years. Federal and private loans totaling twenty-three thousand eight hundred. Approximately fifteen thousand from my work earnings during those six years.
Total: approximately forty-eight thousand. That is what my education cost, all sources combined.
What the scholarship story said: that I received substantial external support and preferred independence.