I had known the answer. Hearing it still mattered.
“What happens if I cancel today?”
Erica paused.
“The initial venue deposit is nonrefundable. The catering and floral orders have not reached their final lock date. I can stop those. You would lose nine hundred dollars, but the remaining scheduled charges would not process.”
Nine hundred dollars was not nothing.
But I thought of Madelyn sitting on a sleeping bag and asking whether she had done something bad.
“I want to cancel.”
Erica’s voice softened. “All of it?”
“Yes.”
“Are you sure?”
I looked at my daughter. She had drawn two beds beneath a crooked yellow sun.
“Yes.”
Erica explained each step. I listened. I confirmed. She sent an email while I was still on the phone, and I read the cancellation notice twice before I thanked her.
The call lasted eleven minutes.
For thirty-three years, I had been taught that saying no required a trial, witnesses, and a closing argument.
It took eleven minutes.
Mom called at 8:19.
I answered.
“What did you do?”
Her voice was shaking.
“I canceled Bellwood House.”
“You had no right.”
“The contract is in my name.”
“That party is my seventieth birthday.”
“And the money was mine.”
“You said it was a gift.”
“It was.” I kept my voice steady. “A gift is voluntary. So is continuing to give it.”
“Because I put your children on clean sleeping bags?”
“Because you decided before we arrived that they mattered less, then expected me to finance a celebration of you as if nothing happened.”
Her breathing changed.
