“I know.”
“She’s pregnant.”
“Yes.”
“She’s younger than you.”
I stared at her.
“She’s twenty-eight.”
Mom looked away.
I continued.
“Khloe and Tyler are adults. You and Dad are adults. I am not the family’s permanent emergency fund.”
Dad leaned forward.
“I think we understand that now.”
Mom turned sharply.
“Paul!”
He raised a hand.
“Lorraine, she’s paid more than forty thousand dollars for us. We can’t keep pretending that doesn’t matter.”
Mom’s face reddened.
I looked at him.
He continued.
“I went through our accounts after the wedding. We’ve been making decisions based on the assumption that our older daughter would cover whatever we couldn’t.”
I swallowed.
He looked embarrassed.
“I didn’t realize how much we’d come to depend on it.”
Mom stared at him.
“You agreed to those payments!”
“I did,” Dad answered. “And I should have spoken up when it became clear we couldn’t keep doing this.”
For several seconds, the room was quiet.
Then Mom looked at me.
“So what do you want? An apology?”
I considered.
“Yes.”
