I laughed.
“Fair enough.”
We drove to Bennett Freight in her old Buick.
As she pulled into the yard, three drivers waved.
One called through his open window, “Afternoon, boss!”
Mom waved back.
Nobody cared what her car cost.
They cared whether she’d made sure their trucks were maintained and their paychecks arrived on time.
I watched her park beside the building my father had helped construct.
For years, I’d treated those things as ordinary.
That afternoon, they looked different.
Over the following month, Ashley and I met several times.
Some conversations were calm.
Others ended with one of us walking away.
She insisted she had loved me before she knew what Bennett Freight was worth.
I had no reason to dismiss that entirely.
But she also admitted that she’d built much of her idea of our future around money and privileges that weren’t ours.
She’d imagined the three-million-dollar house.
The private sports suite.
A share of the family fortune.
She said those expectations had become so real to her that every refusal felt like a personal rejection.
I told her I understood the disappointment.
But I couldn’t build a marriage on the assumption that my mother would eventually surrender whatever Ashley wanted.
We tried meeting with a marriage counselor.
During our second appointment, the counselor asked Ashley what she believed she needed from Diane to feel accepted into the family.
Ashley thought for a while.
Then she answered, “I need her to stop treating me like an outsider.”
The counselor asked what that would look like.
Ashley mentioned the house again.
I stared at my hands.
