His voice broke.
“And now I need money,” he said. “And I couldn’t call you. Because I’m the one who said it. Don’t come to me.”
Ezoic
The kitchen was very quiet.
Ezoic
The pelicans skimmed the waves outside the window.
“So instead,” I said slowly, “you thought you’d just come. And not ask. And let me figure it out.”
My father put his face in his hands.
“Your mother thought,” he said through his fingers, “if we just got here. If we were already inside. If you saw the kids. You’d let us stay. And we wouldn’t have to say it.”
He lowered his hands.
“We wouldn’t have to say we failed,” he said.
I looked at my father.
Sixty-eight. A gray buzz cut. A windbreaker. Sitting at my kitchen table. At the wrong end.
The man who told me women don’t start companies. Who told me I’d be back in a year. Who never once asked how Tidewater was doing. Who said Well, good for you, I guess it worked out when I called to tell him I’d sold it.
