Chapter 7 - The Father's Apology
Two weeks after Thanksgiving, Dad called me and asked if he could take me to breakfast at the small Greek diner near the university where he used to teach.
The morning was bright, cold, and clear, with frost sparkling on the diner windows.
Dad was already sitting in a vinyl corner booth when I arrived, an untouched cup of black coffee steaming in front of him.
He looked older. The lines around his mouth were deeper, his shoulders slumped as if carrying a heavy load of bricks.
"Hi, Dad," I said, sliding into the booth across from him.
He looked up, offering a faint, weary smile. "Hi, sweetheart. You look good. Rested."
"I've been sleeping well," I admitted, taking off my coat.
The waitress brought a fresh mug and poured me coffee before stepping away. Dad stared into his black brew for a long moment, stirring sugar he didn't need into the ceramic cup.
"Your mother and I met with Derek on Wednesday," Dad said quietly. "He showed us the full audit. The co-signed loans. The credit lines."
I nodded, saying nothing.
"I spent thirty years teaching literature and ethics to teenagers, Emma," Dad whispered, his hands trembling as he set down his spoon. "And I completely failed in my own home."
"Dad, you didn't force Amanda to lie—"
"No, but I enabled it," Dad interrupted, looking directly into my eyes with profound remorse. "I let your mother treat Amanda like a delicate porcelain doll while we treated you like an oak tree. We praised you for being tough, but we never stopped to ask if you were tired."
Tears stung the corners of my eyes. In thirty-one years, my father had never spoken those words aloud.
"Every time you bought an old car, we told ourselves you were just being frugal," Dad continued, wiping a stray tear from his cheek. "Every time you skipped a family trip, we assumed you just loved working. We never considered that you were carrying our other daughter on your back while she stepped on your fingers."
"It's over now, Dad," I said, reaching across the laminated table to take his weathered hand.
"It shouldn't have taken an explosion at Thanksgiving for us to see you, Emma," Dad said, squeezing my fingers tightly. "We paid off the co-signed loan from our rainy-day savings. And Amanda... Amanda is living in an extended-stay studio near the expressway. She got a job as an intake clerk at an insurance call center."
"Is she managing?"
"She has twenty-two dollars in her checking account and no credit cards," Dad replied solemnly. "She hated us for the first ten days. But yesterday, she called your mother and asked how to cook lentils."
May you like
A soft, sad laugh left my lips. "Lentils are practical."
"Yes," Dad smiled, a glimmer of warmth returning to his tired eyes. "They are very practical. Just like the daughter we should have listened to twenty years ago."
