The Ignore Daughter Have True Honor Chapter 10
Back in New York, fragments of news would occasionally drift my way.
Ethan had co-signed a six-figure loan for a friend.
The friend defaulted and disappeared. The bank came after him.
His wife took the two kids back to her mother’s and retained a divorce lawyer.
Melanie met a man on Hinge and had a marriage license in six weeks.
Less than a month in, she found out he was carrying a hundred and fifty thousand dollars in credit card debt and student loans.
They spend most nights now breaking dishes at each other. Her Facebook is nothing but “adulthood is a scam” posts.
My mother was admitted to the hospital.
Nothing serious. The doctors just wanted her overnight for observation.
Elliot said he was too busy with work to take off.
Serena had her own problems. The Ashfords had already introduced Julian to someone else. A Newport girl. Comparable pedigree to Serena. Her one advantage was being younger.
Serena spent most of her days watching Julian’s Find My iPhone location, trying to piece together where he actually was.
She didn’t have time to sit at a hospital bedside.
Which left my mother.
She was telling anyone who’d listen —
“My daughter Hazel? PhD from MIT. She was always the sweetest one. When I was sick, she was the one bringing me my medicine, not scared of catching a thing. That girl loves her mother.”
She’d tear up in the middle of saying it.
Her sweetest daughter, of course, was the one who no longer had anything to say to her.
The fragments reach me sometimes. From partners in passing. From LinkedIn feeds. From old classmates in a group text.
I hear them. I don’t feel much.
Not because I’ve gone numb.
Because my life is full. Data. Conferences. Transatlantic collaborations.
There isn’t a single keynote slide’s worth of space left over for old grievances.
There are harder problems to solve.
There is so much still to find out.