### Part 4
Thursday evening, Dad finally looked inside the refrigerator.
I was in the dining room answering an email when I heard the door open.
Then silence.
Then another door.
The freezer.
Then cabinets.
“What the hell?”
I kept typing.
Dad appeared around the corner.
“There’s no food.”
I looked up.
“There’s some food.”
“There are eggs, half a package of cheese, and frozen peas.”
“Sounds like food.”
His jaw shifted.
“We have people coming Saturday.”
“I know.”
“So when are you shopping?”
“I’m not.”
For one second, the entire room seemed to tighten.
He stared at me.
“What do you mean, you’re not?”
“You told me to buy my own food.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Natalie. Are you still sulking about that?”
“I’m not sulking.”
“You know exactly what I meant.”
Actually, I didn’t.
That was the beauty of it.
“What did you mean?”
He opened his mouth, but Mom walked in before he answered.
“Gordon, don’t start.”
He pointed toward the kitchen.
“She hasn’t bought anything for Saturday.”
Mom gave me a warning look.
“Natalie.”
“What?”
“We talked about this.”
“No. You asked if I was still upset. Then you told me Dad deserved a nice birthday.”
Her face tightened.
Dad looked between us.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Mom said quickly, “Nothing.”
That caught my attention.
Dad truly didn’t know how much she knew.
Interesting.
He folded his arms.
“Fine. We’ll go ourselves.”
“Great.”
He hated how easily I said it.
They left twenty minutes later.
I watched from the upstairs window as Dad backed his sedan out of the driveway far too aggressively.
They returned nearly an hour later.
This time there were more bags.
Still nowhere near enough.
Dad had apparently discovered what meat cost.
He brought in two packages of hamburger patties, hot dogs, chips, soda, hamburger buns, and a supermarket sheet cake.
No ribs.
No premium steaks.
No wine.
No elaborate appetizers.
Mom carried a receipt with the expression of someone who had just received a small electrical shock.
“Everything’s gotten so expensive,” she murmured.
I nearly laughed.
Everything had been expensive for years.
They just hadn’t been the people paying.
Dad stood in the kitchen staring at the hamburger packages.
“This won’t be enough.”
Mom looked at him.
“We spent almost two hundred dollars.”
“For burgers?”
“For everything.”
He muttered under his breath.
Then he looked toward the hallway.
“Natalie probably has meat downstairs in the freezer.”
I was standing close enough to hear him.
“No,” I said.
Dad jumped.
“What?”
“The steaks and meat that were in the deep freezer were mine.”
He scoffed.
“Food in this house belongs to everyone.”
That sentence landed almost beautifully.
“Interesting.”
His eyes narrowed.
“Don’t be childish.”
I walked upstairs without answering.
Friday night, I waited until they went to bed.
Then I finished packing the kitchen items I had bought.
I had already photographed receipts and serial numbers.
I wasn’t taking fixtures.