“You left them alone.”
Preston rolled his eyes.
“It was a couple hours. I had a fitting. Get over it.”
I finally turned toward him.
“You are twenty-six years old. Two children were left outside because Mom and Dad decided you needed company buying a suit.”
“It was for an important networking event.”
I turned back to my parents.
“You no longer have any role in our estate planning, guardianship, or medical decisions. Chloe’s sister is guardian if anything happens to us.”
Mom’s hands started trembling around the casserole dish.
“You can’t erase us because of one mistake.”
“One mistake would have been forgetting sunscreen. You knowingly drove away and left a seven-year-old and five-year-old without an adult.”
Dad stepped closer.
“We thought they would stay in the backyard.”
“You locked the house.”
His mouth closed.
I pulled the printed photograph from Preston’s page.
The Italian suit.
My parents drinking sparkling wine.
One o’clock. I held it out toward Dad.
“At the exact time Harper was crying on a concrete porch, you were sitting in a tailor’s shop drinking while Preston showed off a thousand-dollar suit.”
Dad looked away.
I went on.
“You chose fabric over the safety of your grandchildren.”
Mom’s face crumpled.
“I am your mother. I gave you life.”
“I know.”
“You owe me some respect.”
“I owe my children safety.”
She started crying.
The old Harrison would have immediately softened.
That was how our family functioned.
Whenever they became upset after being confronted, their pain became my responsibility.
Not anymore.
“You wanted Preston to be the center of your life,” I said. “You have that now.”
Mom shook her head.
“Don’t say that.”
“You have your golden child. But you do not have unsupervised access to mine.”
Dad called me cruel.
Preston muttered that I had lost my mind.
I didn’t fight with either of them.
Instead, I handed Dad the trespass notice.
“This property is private. Do not come here uninvited again.”
Mom looked at me as if I had become someone she no longer recognized.
