“We can’t make the payments without—” He stopped, seeming to realize how that sounded.
“Without my help,” I finished. “Without the money I was sending every month while you let your wife’s family treat me like garbage.”
He nodded miserably.
“I know how it looks, Dad.”
I leaned forward, making sure he was looking at me.
“Do you know how much money I sent you over five years?” I asked.
He nodded again.
“Isabella calculated it after Christmas,” he said. “The mortgage payments, the down payment, everything else. Over $200,000.”
“$237,468,” I corrected. “I know the exact amount because I finally did something I should have done years ago—I added it up.”
His face crumpled.
“Dad, I’m so sorry. I don’t know how to fix this.”
“You can’t fix it, son,” I said. “That money is gone. But more importantly, those years are gone. Five years when I could have been building a relationship with you instead of funding your wife’s fantasy life.”
“I know,” he whispered. “I know that now.”
He looked up at me with something that might have been hope.
“But maybe we could start over,” he said. “Maybe there’s a way to—”
“Are you asking me to resume the mortgage payments?” I asked.
The hope died in his eyes.
“I… we’re going to lose everything, Dad,” he said. “The house, Isabella’s respect for me, her parents’ approval. I don’t know what I’ll do.”
“You’ll figure it out,” I said, not unkindly. “The same way I figured out how to live without a son who respected me. The same way I learned to spend Christmas alone while you celebrated with people who thought I was beneath them.”
He started to cry then—quietly, like a man who’d run out of other options.
“I lost you, didn’t I?” he said. “I chose them over you, and now I’ve lost you forever.”
I watched him for a long moment—this man I’d raised and loved and sacrificed for, who’d let his wife’s family convince him that his father wasn’t good enough for their company.
“Michael,” I said finally, “you didn’t lose me. You gave me away. There’s a difference.”
He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand.
“Is there any chance, any way you could forgive me?” he asked.
“I forgave you months ago,” I said—and meant it. “But forgiveness doesn’t mean going back to the way things were. It doesn’t mean pretending this didn’t happen, or that I’m going to resume paying for a lifestyle that came with the condition that I be grateful for scraps of your attention.”
“Then what does it mean?” he asked.
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