“It’s exactly the same. You only want the parable when it’s a stranger you’d approve of. I didn’t stop believing in God, Daddy. I stopped believing he speaks only through you.”
His jaw works. My mother is staring at her plate, not daring to look up.
“Eden, how will this look to the congregation?”
“I don’t care what your congregation thinks!” I raise my voice, a thing I have never done. “Have you ever cared about what I think? I’m so tired of your rules! I have done everything you’ve ever asked. Every dress. Every curfew. Every prayer I didn’t mean. And it was never enough. You never cared about me. You only ever cared about your control over me.”
“You will not see him again.” He doesn’t respond to what I said. “You’ll come home after your classes, you’ll sit at this table, and you’ll be the girl I raised. Or?—”
“Or what?” I set my napkin on the table and meet his eyes.
He inhales sharply at my tone.
Then he recovers fast. He always does.
“Or I will stop paying for that school.”
There it is. The one card he’s held since I was old enough to want a single thing for myself.
A month ago, that sentence would have destroyed me.
But I’m not the same person. I’ve had a little taste of freedom, and I want more.
Viper endured so much, and he still survived. I don’t need my father’s money to live.
“I can take out loans,” I say.
He blinks.
“I can take out loans,” I say, louder this time, more confident in my response. “I don’t want your money if it comes attached to your rules. I’m an adult, and I’m able to make my own decisions. I’m going to continue to see Viper. He likes me exactly the way I am. I don’t need you.”
For a breath, he has no response. Then he reaches for the one thing he’s never had to use on me, because he’s never had to.
“Your mother is worried about you.” There it is—the guilt, now that the control has stopped working. “Is that the daughter you’ve chosen to be? One who breaks her mother’s heart for a criminal who’ll use her up and leave her?”
“You have no idea what she feels about anything. Just like you have no idea how I feel.”
His head comes up.
He tries to speak, but I just keep talking. “Mom is the kindest woman I’ve ever known, and she flinches when you clear your throat. And that’s the kind of marriage you preach about?”
A tear runs down my mother’s face, and I want to save her, too. Hopefully, this fight with my father shows her it’s okay to stick up for herself.
But I can’t fight her battles.
I push away from the table, stand, and storm off to my room. Within minutes, I’ve packed a suitcase with everything I need.
My father stands in the doorway, watching me do it, but staying quiet.
I zip the bag.
“You walk out that door,” he says, “you can’t come back.”
“Okay,” I tell him.
My mother is in the hall when I come out. She doesn’t tell me to be careful. She doesn’t ask me to stay. She presses something into my hand—folded bills, the grocery money she’s allowed to keep.
She closes my fingers over it before he can see.
