“Do you have any idea what this has been like for us?”
Emma felt something almost surreal rise in her chest.
Not rage.
Recognition.
“Do I know what it’s like,” she said slowly, “to have someone disappear the second they stop being useful?”
Both of them went quiet.
Her mother’s face changed first.
Not into shame.
Into alarm.
“You heard us,” she said.
Emma held her gaze.
“Yes.
I heard all of it.”
The hallway seemed to narrow around them.
Her father’s jaw tightened.
“You took one private conversation and turned it into this whole melodrama.”
“Private?” Emma asked.
“In the house I helped pay for? While I was carrying in cupcakes because you asked me to leave work early and help you?”
He looked away first.
Her mother tried a different approach, softer now, almost wounded.
“We were frustrated.
Families vent.
That doesn’t mean we don’t love you.”
