"Oh, enough, Mom. So you stayed here and looked after me for a month. So what?"
"Even if you spent money and did the work, you did it because you wanted to."
"Either way, you lived in this house for a month. That's a fact."
"If you won't pay for your stay, what is that if not freeloading?"
Because you wanted to.
Three little words, and thirty days of backbreaking work were wiped clean.
Right then, I felt something inside me just—break.
I looked at my daughter for a long moment. Said nothing.
I took out my phone and scanned Jeffrey's payment code.
Transferred the fifteen thousand.
The second it went through, Jeffrey grinned.
"There you go, Mom. Was that so hard? You're the elder here—you ought to put your kids first."
"Don't be so stingy about every little thing."
The irony was breathtaking.
When they were billing me, they'd calculated every last cent.
Three hundred a day for the room. Two hundred for utilities. Not a penny negotiable.
Now the money was in hand, and suddenly I was the stingy one.
Looking at Jeffrey standing there like it was the most natural thing in the world, I couldn't help thinking back to three years ago, when he and Virginia first came to discuss marriage.