“Then don’t buy them.”
“You can’t do this without warning.”
“I warned you last night.”
She hung up.By noon, she had posted online about older women who used money to control younger women. She did not use my name, but Richard’s sister, Vanessa, called twenty minutes later.
“You can’t pretend to be family and then abandon a child because she hurt your feelings.”
“She’s twenty-one.”
“She’s still in college.”
“She has two parents.”
“You know her mother can’t afford tuition.”
“Then Richard will have to.”
The silence on Vanessa’s end told me she knew more than she was saying.
“Richard has had a difficult year,” she said carefully.
“So have I.”
“That’s different. You’ve always been good with money.”
I nearly laughed.
That appeared to be their family’s financial philosophy. Because I was responsible, I was expected to absorb the consequences of everyone who was not.
For ten minutes
