Chapter 5 - What My Parents Really Wanted
"Your mother showed me the brochure herself," he said. "Told me you were both grown, and that Sadie was turning into a burden nobody in the family was willing to carry."
"That's a lie. She's not a burden. And I would have taken care of her — if she ever needed me to."
"They were never going to tell you." His voice was so low I had to lean in. "Your mother said, and I'm quoting her, 'Megan deserves a life of her own. We are not chaining her to Sadie.'"
"She actually said that?"
"She offered me a settlement to marry her. Legal guardianship, the whole thing. I didn't sign for the money or the paperwork. I signed because I love her. Because I wanted her to have the life she's owed."
I looked down at the paper crushed against my chest.
One thing kept hitting me over and over.
My own parents had done this.
"And Sadie knew," I said.
He nodded.
"I told her about a year in. I couldn't keep lying to her. She cried. Then she laughed. Then she told me she wanted to keep me anyway."
He smiled through the tears running off his jaw.
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"Sadie begged me not to. She said you'd go to war with them, that it would blow the whole family apart. I kept that promise right up until tonight — when she asked me for a new one."
We both looked down the empty corridor.
I thought about the flowers Nate brought her every Tuesday for no reason at all.
The way he could quote her favorite movie start to finish.
That marriage was never once a performance.
What they had was the real thing.
But my parents — I could not find a way to forgive my parents.
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"I hated you for about two whole minutes," I whispered.
"I'd have hated me longer than that."
