I told the room that before I was a captain, I was the girl whose dog was taken away because my brother lied about being bitten. I was the girl who was left in a hospital alone while they went to support Tyler’s latest dream. My mother stood up and called the presentation disgusting, but I told her that it was simply documentation.
Silas stood up from the back of the room and told everyone that he had seen the empty chairs at the funeral himself. He looked at my father and told him he had disgraced his own name by choosing a vacation over a burial. My parents shoved their chairs back and left the room in a hurry, with Tyler muttering that the whole situation was insane.
Nobody tried to stop them or called after them as they fled the restaurant in total humiliation. I stood at the front of the room with the remote in my hand, feeling a strange sense of sadness for all the years I spent trying to be enough for them. Aunt Martha started crying, and I realized the night wasn’t over because people were finally seeing the truth.