Part 2:
Every step toward that house reminded me how much had changed.
Daniel had once waited at the window when he heard my truck. Now he preferred that I park where his friends wouldn’t notice it.
Emily was even less subtle.
She treated my presence like an inconvenience unless money was involved, and Daniel had slowly learned to do the same.
Still, it was his 30th birthday.
So I showed up.
Inside was everything they valued: expensive furniture, polished surfaces, people dressed for photographs, and a house large enough to make everyone assume Daniel had earned it.
Nobody there knew the simplest fact about the place.
Daniel didn’t own it.
Emily didn’t own it.
The deed belonged to an LLC controlled entirely by me.
I had never used that fact to embarrass them.
I had never threatened them with it.
Until that night, I had hoped I never would.
Then I sat down among people who thought I was the least important man in the room, looked at my son across the table, and slid the small brown-paper gift toward him.
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