Chapter 3 - THE AWAKENING OF ENTITLEMENT
Chloe’s fingers tightened so hard around her crystal water glass I thought the stem might snap in half.
“I didn’t know you were paying for the whole thing, Valerie,” she defended defensively, her voice losing its polished influencer cadence.
“No. Evidently you didn’t,” I said coldly.
She glanced wildly at Mark again, but I had zero interest in watching my adult son squirm his way out of a hole he had dug himself.
“Well,” I said, standing up from the table, “now you know.”
I began picking up the empty salad plates.
Behind me, Chloe’s voice sharpened instantly from embarrassment into sheer, unadulterated entitlement. “Call them back.”
I stopped in my tracks and turned slowly around. “What did you say?”
“Call the resort back,” she demanded, standing up. “Tell them it was a clerical mistake. We already requested our PTO time off work. We’ve made social commitments. You can’t just ruin our summer over a hurt feeling!”
There was something almost breathtaking about the dizzying speed with which acute embarrassment had mutated into raging demand.
“It wasn’t a mistake,” I said steadily.
“You can’t do this to us!”
“You made it abundantly clear that I wasn’t welcome in your presence,” I replied, my voice hard as iron. “I am simply saving you from the immense burden of my senior citizen aesthetic.”
I carried the plates into the kitchen and set them in the sink.
Mark followed me closely, hovering by the counter like a scolded dog. “Mom, come on. Let’s not be dramatic. Let’s sit back down. We can adjust things.”
“The trip is cancelled, Mark.”
“We can make room for you! Maybe one night we all have dinner together, and Chloe can schedule her photo shoots around your resting schedule—”
I turned off the kitchen faucet and turned around, looking at my son with profound pity. “Listen to yourself. You are offering me the gracious privilege of eating one single dinner on a luxury vacation that I was paying for, while your wife treats me like an unwanted background prop.”
He stopped talking. His mouth hung open, but no words came out.
May you like
“You and Chloe are welcome to finish your chicken,” I said, drying my hands on a kitchen towel. “When you’re finished eating, I want you both out of my house.”
I walked down the hallway to my bedroom, closed the solid oak door, and locked it quietly from the inside.
