She looked at Mom.
“Elaine?”
Mom clasped her hands in her lap.
“I knew she helped.”
I felt my chest tighten.
“Helped?”
Mom winced.
“Natalie, please.”
Dad seized onto that.
“Exactly. She helped. Families help each other.”
I stared at him.
“Three weeks ago, you called me a freeloading leech.”
Several relatives looked sharply at Dad.
He shifted.
“That was a private family disagreement.”
“You said I was living off you while eating a steak I paid for.”
My cousin Jonah coughed into his hand, disguising what sounded suspiciously like a laugh.
Dad heard it.
His embarrassment turned immediately back into anger.
“Do you have any idea how much it would have cost you to rent a room somewhere?”
“I do.”
That answer stopped him.
“I’m a financial consultant, Dad. Of course I do.”
I opened another folder.
“I also calculated the market value of renting a bedroom in this neighborhood with shared kitchen access. Then I compared it with what I paid toward the household.”
Dad’s mouth tightened.
I continued.
“Even if you charged me a reasonable room rental every month, my contributions exceeded it significantly.”
Uncle Mark looked up.
“Gordon, you told me Natalie barely paid for anything.”
Dad’s shoulders stiffened.
“I never said that.”
“You absolutely did.”
Aunt Rachel nodded.
“At Christmas you said she was draining your retirement.”
Mom closed her eyes.
That one I hadn’t known.
Something hot moved through me.
Not rage exactly.
Worse.
Humiliation delayed by months.
“How many people did you tell?”
Dad waved his hand.
“People exaggerate when they’re talking.”
“No. You exaggerated.”
My voice cracked for the first time.
“You made yourself generous by making me pathetic.”
He looked away.
That confirmed more than an apology would have.
Uncle Mark closed the binder.
“Why?”
Dad stared at him.
“Why what?”
“Why would you tell everyone you were supporting her if she was paying this much?”
Dad’s face hardened.
“She’s my daughter. She was living under my roof. I shouldn’t have to make a public accounting of every little thing.”
“Forty-three thousand dollars isn’t a little thing,” Rachel said.
Mom suddenly stood.
“Can everybody stop? Please? It’s Gordon’s birthday.”
The sentence landed so badly that even Mom seemed to hear it after she said it.
Aunt Rachel stared at her.
“Elaine, your daughter just showed us she’s been paying most of your household expenses while Gordon told us she was taking advantage of you.”
Mom swallowed.
“I didn’t want him embarrassed.”
I felt every eye shift toward me.
I said quietly, “So you let him embarrass me.”
Mom sat back down.
Dad stepped forward.
“All right. Enough.”
His voice had the old authority in it.
The voice that used to make me stop arguing as a teenager.
“This is my house. My birthday. If you don’t like how things are done here, maybe you should leave.”
I looked at him for a long moment.
Then I checked the time.
“Okay.”
He frowned.
“What?”
A diesel engine rumbled outside.
Everyone turned toward the front windows.
A white moving truck slowed in front of the house and backed toward our driveway.
The reverse alarm beeped through the silence.
Dad’s face emptied.
I picked up my keys.
“That’s actually the second thing I planned for today.”
### Part 7
Dad followed me outside.
“Natalie.”
I kept walking.
“Natalie, stop.”
The afternoon sun was bright enough to make me squint as two movers climbed down from the truck.
One of them raised a hand.