CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 3 — THE MONEY STOPPED FIRST
I helped Emily into a chair at the kitchen table and knelt in front of her.
“Breathe with me,” I said.
She tried.
One hand stayed locked over her belly.
“Is it the baby?”
“I don’t know,” she whispered. “It hurts.”
That was all I needed.
I pulled out my phone and called the hospital.
The nurse told me to bring her in immediately.
When I stood, my mother finally appeared in the kitchen doorway, still holding the chip bag.
“What’s all the drama?”
I stared at her.
For the first time in my life, I saw her clearly.
Not as the woman who raised me.
Not as the tired mother who needed help.
As someone who could hear a pregnant woman gasp in pain and still make herself the victim.
“We’re going to the hospital,” I said.
Teresa rolled her eyes.
“She’s fine. She just doesn’t like being corrected.”
Emily flinched.
That flinch did more damage to me than my mother’s words.
Brittany came up behind her.
“Are you serious? Because we ordered dessert.”
Kayla muttered, “Of course she makes it about herself.”
Lily crossed her arms.
“This is why nobody likes being around her.”
The room went silent after that.
Not because they regretted it.
Because they saw my face.
I walked past my mother into the living room and turned off the television.
The sudden quiet felt almost violent.
Then I picked up the pizza boxes from the coffee table and dropped them into a trash bag.
Nobody moved.
“Starting tonight,” I said, “nobody in this room gets another dollar from me.”
Brittany laughed once.
“You’re mad right now. You don’t mean that.”
I looked at the phone in her hand.
“The payment plan is under my name. I’m canceling it tomorrow.”
Her face changed.
Kayla stood.
“You can’t just cut us off.”
“I can.”
Mom’s voice sharpened.
“After everything I sacrificed for you?”
I turned to her.
“I have paid your rent, your prescriptions, your cable, your groceries, and your debts for three years.”
She lifted her chin.
“That’s what sons do.”
“No,” I said. “That’s what guilty sons do. And you made sure I stayed guilty.”
Her mouth opened, but I kept going.
“You took my help and used it to hurt my wife. You ate food I paid for while she washed your dishes eight months pregnant. You called her a freeloader in the home my paycheck keeps standing.”
Emily whispered from the kitchen, “Ethan, please…”
I looked back at her.
Her face was scared.
Not of me.
Of what my family would do after I stopped protecting them from consequences.
That hurt too.
I picked up my keys.
“Pack whatever belongs to you tonight,” I told them. “You are out by morning.”
My mother’s face went white.
May you like
“You would throw your own family away for her?”
