Melissa finally found her voice. “You’re making this sound crueler than it was.”
I let out a short, bitter laugh. “Crueler than being told on the porch that I wasn’t supposed to come?”
She flushed. “I didn’t think Mom would say it like that.”
That sentence hit me harder than the original insult. Not because it excused anything, but because it confirmed everything. They had planned it. The wording had just come out uglier than expected.
Dad set his napkin down. “Tell her the truth, Melissa.”
She looked at Jason, hoping he might step in. He didn’t. He just kept staring at the mashed potatoes like they held legal advice.
Melissa inhaled. “We needed to talk to you privately.”
“About money,” Dad said.
Her jaw tightened. “Yes.”
Jason had lost his job in February. I knew that much. What I hadn’t known was how serious things were. Melissa began speaking in clipped, defensive bursts: the mortgage was behind, two credit cards were maxed out, Tyler needed braces, and their adjustable rate had jumped. She spoke as if the facts alone should excuse everything.
I listened, stunned, because I might have felt sympathy if she hadn’t chosen to buy that sympathy with my humiliation.