Chapter 9 - The Hardest Boundary
The silence in the conservatory was absolute, broken only by the gentle splashing of the marble fountain and the distant murmur of dinner guests laughing in the main dining room.
I looked at my father—a man who had worked sixty hours a week his entire life, only to watch his retirement get swallowed by an ungrateful, entitled adult child he had loved too blindly.
"You want to know how to stop?" I asked softly, pulling a chair up to sit directly across from him.
Dad nodded, wiping a tear from his cheek with a calloused thumb.
"You pack their bags tonight," I said, my voice unwavering. "You give them forty-eight hours to find another place to live, and you change the locks on the front door. You turn off your phone, you freeze your credit cards, and you let them fall."
Dad swallowed hard, terror flashing across his features. "What if she... what if she cuts us off completely? What if she never speaks to us again?"
"Dad," I said, reaching out to place my hand over his. "She hasn't spoken to you as a daughter in years. She has only spoken to you as a bank teller. If you don't cut the cord now, she is going to drag you down into bankruptcy right alongside her."
He stared at my hand for a long, agonizing minute.
May you like
Then, slowly, a heavy breath rushed out of his lungs, and he nodded.
"Okay," he whispered. "I'll do it."
