David’s face went red around the ears.
“Don’t do this right now. Not in front of everyone.”
“You told everyone you were tired of supporting me,” I said. “I figured they deserved to know what, exactly, you’ve been supporting.”
I walked to the dining room and picked up a pink folder from the sideboard.
Inside were printed pages. Dozens of them. Each one carried a date, a description, an amount, and where possible, a receipt.
I hadn’t invented a single number. I work in logistics — at the Austin Tech Hub, one wrong invoice can shut down an entire production line. I had not climbed to that position by being careless with documentation. The same discipline I applied to freight routing, I had applied to my own household. I simply hadn’t shown anyone the results until now.
I placed the first sheet on the table.
“Monthly grocery average: nine hundred and fifty dollars. Paid by me.”
I laid down another.
“Utilities — gas, electricity, water, internet, streaming, HOA — paid by me.”
Another sheet.
“Victoria’s prescriptions. Paid by me.”
My mother-in-law blinked.
“David asked you to handle that.”
“David asked. I paid. Those are two different things.”
Ryan tried to defuse the moment with a grin.
“Come on, you’re not going to invoice us for every piece of chicken we ate, are you?”
I pulled out a second folder.
“Not per piece. Just the annual total.”
Sarah went quiet when she saw the number.
“Nine thousand…”
“That’s only the Saturday dinners,” I said. “It doesn’t include birthdays, school supplies, backpacks, toys, the gas I spent picking people up, or the loans that were borrowed and never mentioned again.”
