Page 29 of Ricardo

“How would you know, Mom?” I ask. “Did they print it out in the evening paper?”

She looks shocked at my response.

My father sets his glass down with care. “Is this why you left Connecticut?”

My stomach goes cold.

He has asked versions of the question before. My mother has too. Why now? Why so abruptly? What happened that could not be handled? Why would you throw away a life like that? Why would you humiliate yourself by ending things so close to the wedding?

Never the real question.

Never, “Did he hurt you?”

Never, “Are you safe?”

It's exactly how I knew that they were not people I could talk to.

I meet his eyes. “I left because I wanted to leave.”

“That is not an explanation.”

I breathe in through my nose.

No.

I will not use his courtroom rules in my own life.

“It’s the only one I’m giving you.”

My mother looks genuinely startled.

My father goes still.

For the first time all night, I see something like anger come through the public version of his face. Again, not concern. Just anger and disappointment.

“You do not speak to me that way.”

“I’m twenty-six years old.”

“And living like a girl determined to undo every advantage she has been given.”

I blink.

My mother looks toward him. “Patrick.”

He keeps his eyes on me. “You came back from Connecticut without a plan. You ended an engagement to a man with a serious future. You took a job beneath you because a Conti boy opened a door for you instead of coming to me for a real opportunity, and now you sit at my table correcting guests as if indignation is a profession.”

The room is quiet when he finishes.

Very quiet.

I feel every inch of this dress. The seams. The fitted waist. The pearls at my ears. The pins holding my hair in place. All of it chosen to make the evening easier, and none of it saving me from the thing I knew would happen eventually.

“You think my job is beneath me,” I say.

“I think answering phones for Mario Conti is not what we raised you for.”

“You raised me for what, exactly?”