“Mom, please.”
“Your father and I did not raise you to marry the poorest loser we’ve ever seen.”
“Don’t call him that.”
“We’ll call him what he is,” my father said flatly. “A boy who works a register and thinks that’s enough for our daughter.”
I set my fork down.
Lately the venom felt sharper.
“He’s putting his mother through treatment. Alone.”
“That’s exactly the point,” my mother snapped. “You want to inherit that? His debts, his sick mother, his little apartment above the laundromat?”
I didn’t answer.
They’d been doing this for years. But lately the venom felt sharper.
Then came Carl.
“He’s the Whitfields’ boy,” my father announced one Sunday, as if presenting a horse at auction. “Runs his father’s dealership. Drives that new Lexus. Good family. Known them for years.”
“I’m not interested.”
Graham is the kind of man who drains one.
“You haven’t even had dinner with him.”
“I don’t need to. I have a boyfriend.”
My mother laughed — actually laughed — as if I’d told the funniest joke she’d ever heard.
“That boy? Sweetheart, don’t be dramatic. Carl is the kind of man who protects a family. Graham is the kind of man who drains one.”
“Why do you hate him so much?” I asked.
My father’s eyes flickered. Just for a second. Something shifted behind them before his expression closed off again.
“Because we know better than you.”
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