“So I told the investors,” Ethan was saying, his voice booming, “if you want in on this condo development, the buy-in starts at fifty grand. No exceptions. And they were begging me to take their checks.”
He stopped when he saw me.
“Oh, hey, sis. Nice of you to join the living.”
“Hi, Ethan. Mom. Dad.”
I stood there awkwardly in my fatigue uniform, feeling like an intruder in a stranger’s house.
“Well, don’t just stand there letting the cold air in,” Mom said, not looking up from her plate. “Sit down.”
I moved toward the empty chair next to Dad, but Mom cleared her throat loudly.
“Not there, Olive. That’s for my purse and the extra wine bottles. We didn’t think you’d make it in time, so we set you up over there.”
She pointed a manicured finger toward the corner of the room.
There, pushed up against the wall, was a folding card table. It was the kind with the vinyl top that we used for garage sales. It was wobbly, one leg shorter than the others, propped up by a folded magazine. It was set with a paper plate and a red Solo cup. Worst of all, it was positioned directly under the drafty window that Dad had been promising to fix for a decade.
I was thirty-seven years old. I was a lieutenant colonel commanding special operations, and I was being sent to the kids’ table in my own parents’ house.
“Are you serious?” I asked, my voice barely a whisper.
“Oh, stop making a face,” Mom snapped. “It’s just a seat. Sit down and eat.”
I sat. The chair was a metal folding chair that was freezing cold against my legs. I looked at the spread of food on the main table. The turkey carcass was picked mostly clean. The bowl of mashed potatoes was scraped low.
“Pass the turkey, please,” I said.
Ethan grabbed the platter.
“Sorry, sis. I think I got the last of the dark meat. You know how much I love the legs.”
He grinned, grease shining on his chin, and took a bite of a succulent, juicy drumstick. He passed me the platter.
All that was left were a few slices of the breast meat. It looked chalky, dry. It had probably been sitting out for an hour.
I took a slice. It was like chewing on drywall.
When I reached for the gravy boat to add some moisture, it was empty.
“Mom, is there any more gravy?”
“No. Ethan finished it,” she said, dabbing her mouth with a cloth napkin while I stared at my paper one. “He’s been working so hard on this real estate project. He needs the brain food. It’s exhausting work convincing people to trust you with their money.”
“And what about me?” I asked, the words slipping out before I could stop them. “I just got back from Afghanistan, Mom. I haven’t slept in two days.”
Mom waved her hand dismissively.
“Oh, please. You’re used to that. You eat those—what are they called? MREs? That stuff in plastic bags? Your palette is probably ruined anyway. You wouldn’t appreciate the nuance of this seasoning.”
I put the fork down. The dry turkey felt like a stone in my throat. My hands were trembling slightly under the table, a tremor I had developed after a particularly bad IED explosion near my convoy three weeks ago.
“Did you bring anything?” Mom asked suddenly, her eyes lighting up for the first time. “What gifts from the duty-free shop or wherever you were stationed? I saw these beautiful pashmina scarves in a magazine that said they were from that region.”
I stared at her.
“I was in a combat zone, Mother. I wasn’t shopping.”
The disappointment on her face was immediate and brutal.
“Oh, well, that’s thoughtful of you. Come home empty-handed after a year away.”
“I came home alive,” I said, my voice tightening.
Ethan laughed. It was a cruel, braying sound.
“Calm down, G.I. Jane. Don’t go having a flashback on us. We’re just trying to have a nice dinner.”
He took a long swig of wine.
“So, are you still doing that whatever it is you do? Logistics? What is it? Basically being a glorified secretary at the airfield, scheduling flights?”
I looked at him. I looked at his soft hands, his designer watch, the way he slouched in his chair with entitlement oozing from every pore.
“I don’t schedule flights, Ethan,” I said quietly.
“Right, right. You fix the planes or whatever. Look, the point is it’s government work. Fixed income. Low ceiling.”
He turned to Dad.
“That’s why I tell you, Dad, you gotta think bigger like me.”
Dad nodded sagely, looking at Ethan with a mixture of pride and adoration that he had never, not once, directed at me.
“Your brother is right, Olive. He has a mind for business. He understands leverage. You? Well, you’ve always been better at following orders. Not everyone is smart enough to be an entrepreneur.”
“Not smart enough,” I repeated.
I looked down at my plastic plate. I looked at the dry white meat. I thought about the bank transfer I made every single month. I thought about the “entrepreneur” brother who was currently leveraging my parents’ retirement fund for schemes that never materialized.
“Well,” Dad continued, wiping his mouth, “at least you have job security. It’s steady. Keeps you out of trouble.”
They talked over me for the rest of the meal. They talked about neighbors I didn’t know, TV shows I hadn’t seen, and vacations they were planning to take.
I sat at the wobbly card table, the wind from the window chilling the sweat on my back, eating cold potatoes.
I was invisible. I was a wallet. A pack mule. A disappointment.
But as I looked at my father, seeing the slight gray pallor of his skin, I remembered something else. I remembered the phone call from two years ago, the panic, the surgery that insurance wouldn’t fully cover.
They called me not smart enough to make money. They called me a secretary. But they didn’t know whose name was really on the checks that kept this house running.
And as the memory faded, bringing me back to the sterile lights of the airport terminal, a bitter realization rose in my throat.
I had paid for the heart that was currently beating in my father’s chest. The same heart that had no room for me.
People always say that you can’t put a price on family. But in the Holden household, family had a very specific price tag. And two years ago, I found out exactly how much it cost to keep my father alive.
It was a Tuesday when Dad’s chest tightened like a vise. The doctors called it a widowmaker heart attack. Massive blockage. Immediate danger.
By the time I got the call via a satellite phone in a dusty command tent in Syria, he was already being wheeled into surgery for an emergency triple bypass.
I was seven thousand miles away. I couldn’t hold his hand. I couldn’t drive Mom to the hospital. But I could do the one thing I was always good for.
I could pay.