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“It’s part of the point.”
“The point,” my father says, “is that you have a life waiting for you that most people would kill for, and you’re out there waiting tables in some backwoods town in nowhere Pennsylvania, like you have a future there.”
My stomach drops. “How did you know about the diner?”
“Graham mentioned it,” my mother says. “He’s worried too, whether you deserve it or not.”
“I do deserve it.”
“That’s not the point either,” my father cuts in.
“Then what is?”
My mother’s voice softens again with a practiced gentleness. “Sweetheart, I fixed things with the firm. I told them there was a family emergency, that you needed a short leave. Your internship is still there. Nobody outside this family even has to know any of this happened.”
“You covered for me?”
“I protected you,” she corrects. “The way I always have. So you can come home, we can put this behind us. You can start your internship on schedule and finish planning your wedding. This can just be something we don’t talk about again.”
“I don’t want it covered up. And I don’t want to pretend it didn’t happen.”
“Astra.” My father’s voice sharpens. “You’ve made your point. You proved you can survive on your own, which, congratulations, most twenty-three-year-olds figure out by nineteen. Now it’s time to grow up and come home.”
The words land like a slap.
“This isn’t me trying to prove some point, Dad. And it isn’t some phase I’m trying to get out of my system.”
“Then what is it?”
“It’s the first time in my life I’ve felt like myself. I have a job. I bought a pink scooter. I’m learning to drive, all on my own. Because I want to, not because someone told me it’s something I’m supposed to do. I’m happy.”
“You’re waiting tables,” my father says, like the words themselves disgust him.
“I’m happy waiting tables.”
“That’s absurd.”
“But it’s true.”
“It’s a phase,” my mother says, gentle again. “Everyone your age has one. You’ll look back on this in a year and laugh.”
“I’m not going to laugh about this.”
“Astra.” My father’s patience audibly runs out. “I’ve indulged this long enough. You have seventy-two hours to book a flight home. After that, we stop indulging it.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means the tuition deposit doesn’t refund itself. It means the internship your mother saved won’t wait forever. It means the accounts that have funded every version of the life you’re currently throwing away don’t have to keep funding a version of you we don’t recognize.”
The threat sits there, plain and unmistakable.
“Are you saying you’ll cut me off?”
“I’m saying actions have consequences, and so far, yours haven’t had any.”
My mother doesn’t argue with him. That’s the part that hurts more than anything he’s said. She stays quiet, and her silence tells me everything about which side of this she’s actually standing on, no matter how kind she sounded a minute ago.
“I need you to hear me out,” I say, my voice shaking now. “I’m not confused. I’m not having some crisis. I’m choosing this.”
