“Ask your wife’s family first.”
The words slipped out of my mouth with a surprising calmness. It felt like an unexpected but necessary climax to a story that had been building for years. As soon as I said them, the phone line went quiet, and I could almost hear the gears turning in his head. This was not the response he was expecting, and certainly not the one he had hoped for.
For decades, I had been the one he turned to in times of trouble. Every scraped knee, every heartbreak, every financial stumble—Mom was always there to catch him. But this time was different. It was as if all the hurt from that birthday party, and every other slight I had endured silently, had finally coalesced into those five words. They felt heavy, but they also felt liberating.
