She rolled her eyes.
“Don’t be dramatic, Ethan. He doesn’t have a reliable car.”
My wife, Laura, entered with groceries and immediately avoided my eyes.
That told me enough.
“You knew?”
Laura sighed. “Madison asked me. I told her maybe you’d understand.”
“Maybe?”
“She’s twenty-two,” Laura snapped. “She wanted to help her father.”
I stared at them.
Apparently, generosity was easy when the gift was someone else’s forty-eight-thousand-dollar vehicle.
Madison crossed her arms.
“Besides, Derek said you barely need it. You have the company sedan.”
I almost laughed.
Derek had hated me since Laura married me eight years earlier. He called me “Mr. Spreadsheet” because I worked in corporate risk management. At family gatherings, he loved reminding everyone that he had been Laura’s “first real man.”
Madison had inherited his arrogance.
For years, she treated me like an ATM with a pulse.
Tuition emergency? Ethan.
Apartment deposit? Ethan.
Broken laptop? Ethan.
But whenever I asked for basic respect, I became “controlling.”
I pulled out my phone.
“Where is the Yukon?”
