“I wrote out the numbers because I thought that was what a responsible man was supposed to do. Your Social Security check is a fixed amount. We have two children, daycare expenses, a mortgage, and bills we can barely keep up with some months. I thought we were trying to find an arrangement that worked for everybody.”
“I understand that, Todd. I do.”
“But I treated you like another bill to calculate.”
He looked directly at me then.
“And that was wrong.”
I hadn’t expected that.
In all the days since the kitchen meeting, I had imagined Michelle apologizing. I had imagined her telling me that she missed me, that she had been frightened about losing me, that she wished she had handled things differently.
I had not imagined Todd being the first to admit what he had done.
He pulled out a chair and sat down.
“I’ve been thinking about the way my father treated his mother,” he continued. “She lived with us for six years. We never charged her rent, but we expected her to watch the kids, cook supper when my mother worked late, and keep the house straight. Nobody called it work because she was family.”
