“I am.”
“My mortgage is due.”
“So is mine.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
For years, Eleanor had answered questions like that with apologies.
This time she simply waited.
Heather filled the silence herself.
“You said you’d help.”
“I did help.”
“So now because Sophie wants horse camp, you’re suddenly abandoning everybody?”
“No.
Because you all decided my daughter’s membership in this family could be threatened over one hundred dollars, I’m no longer financing the people making that threat.”
“That is completely different.”
“How?”
Heather did not have an answer.
She changed direction.
“Sophie is going to be devastated.”
“Mia was devastated yesterday.”
“That’s not fair.
Sophie didn’t do anything.”
“I agree.”
Heather hesitated.
The anger in her voice weakened just enough for confusion to slip through.
“Then why cancel the money for my kids?”
“Because your children are your responsibility, Heather.”
“You’ve always helped.”
“Yes.”
“And now you won’t?”
“Correct.”
Heather went silent.
Eleanor realized how unfamiliar the word sounded coming out of her own mouth.
Correct.
No apology after it.
No explanation designed to make rejection feel comfortable.
Heather tried again.
“Mom is hysterical.”
“She told my daughter she was not family unless she paid.”
“She didn’t mean it literally.”
“Mia did.”
That stopped Heather.
Eleanor could hear her breathing.
“She thought she had to earn one hundred dollars by herself,” Eleanor said.
“She broke her piggy bank.
She went to Mrs.
Novak’s.
She came home with sore hands.
Then she told me she shouldn’t have said anything because she was afraid everyone would be angry.”
Heather’s reply came softer.
“I didn’t know she was doing all that.”
“You knew she had been told to pay.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“It was to Mia.”
Heather had no immediate response.
Eleanor could have used that moment to attack her sister.
Years of resentment were available if she wanted them.
College.
