Page 93 of Beautiful When He Breaks

“We’re here because you left matters unresolved,” he says.

I scoff at that. “No, you told me to marry the woman who abandoned my child or get disowned. That felt pretty fucking resolved to me.”

My mother winces at the language, as if that’s the offensive part of the sentence.

“Watch your mouth,” my father snaps, defaulting to the old instinct to correct my tone before he has to engage with my meaning.

I laugh then, a short, bitter thing I don’t bother hiding. “That’s still your opening move? Seriously?”

My father steps down one stair, trying to reclaim height even from a porch step, and for the first time I realize I’m not afraid of him anymore. Not in the old way. I’m angry, yes. Hurt, absolutely. But fear feels burned out of me. Maybe fatherhood rearranged my priorities so absolutely, there’s no room left to be scared of a man who values appearances over his own son.

My mother looks at me with that pained, delicate expression she uses when she’s about to say something cruel and wants credit for suffering through it. “We came because this has gone too far.”

I fold my arms. “Funny. I was about to say the same thing.”

“Eli,” she says, softer. “Please don’t do this.”

I actually blink at that. “Do what?”

“Make us your enemy,” she says.

The sheer audacity of it almost knocks me sideways. “You did that yourselves,” I say. “You don’t get to show up at my house after the things you said about my daughter and act like I’m the one escalating.”

My father’s expression darkens. “We raised you better than this,” he says.

“No,” I say immediately. “You raised me to obey. That’s not the same thing.”

The silence after that is hot and ugly and thick with years I do not have time to unpack on the front steps.

My mother breaks first, her voice thinner now. “You think we don’t understand you’re upset?”

“Upset?” I repeat. “You think that’s the word?”

“We think you’re making permanent decisions out of anger and shame,” she responds.

That one almost gets me because it’s insulting in how closely it circles the truth without touching it. Shame is here, yes. Just not for the reasons they think.

“I’m making permanent decisions because I have a daughter, and unlike both of you, I don’t get to turn that on and off based on whether the circumstances are socially acceptable.”

My father actually scoffs. “You still don’t understand the point.”

“No, I understand it perfectly,” I say. “You care more about how she got here than that she’s here at all.”

“That is not what we said.”

“It’s exactly what you said!” My voice rises despite my effort to keep it steady. “You said you didn’t accept her. You said I needed to marry Celeste. You talked about my child like she was some shameful consequence instead of a human being. So, tell me what point I’m missing, Dad. Go on. Explain it to me.”

“We were shocked,” my mother says before my father can respond, voice trembling. “You blindsided us.”

“I blindsided you?” I laugh once and shake my head at this entire fucking conversation. “Celeste abandoned a baby on my doorstep with legal papers. I found out she was mine through a DNA test—mine, even though I don’t even fucking remember it happening, and then I called because I thought, stupidly, you might still want to know your granddaughter. You weren’t shocked, Mom. You were cruel.”

My father’s mouth flattens, and my mother looks like I slapped her. Maybe I did, in the only way I have left.

“What was cruel,” my father says, every word clipped and cold, “was you putting us in this position to begin with.”

The anger in me flares so hard it burns clean through the last of the helplessness. “I did not put you in any position. You chose one.”

“A child exists because of your choices.”