“If you walk away now, you are proving that you only care about yourself,” she said.

The manipulation was so familiar it almost made me laugh.

I looked at Derek, whose eyes were fixed on the gravel at his feet.

He was clearly working through years of shared memories, weighing the reality of our childhood against the image she had projected.

He looked up, first at Mother, then at Father, and finally at me.

“Where are they meeting?” Derek asked me.

Mother stiffened, her jaw tightening. “Derek, you are not skipping your own celebration dinner for a dive bar.”

“It is my graduation, Mom,” Derek said.

He took off his mortarboard hat, holding it by the tassel.

The afternoon sun caught the sweat on his forehead.

“And I want to celebrate with the people who actually build things,” he added.

Mother’s face went pale, the carefully applied blush suddenly looking like paint on plaster.

She looked at Father, but he only stared at the nearby flowerbed, silent as always.

“You are both being incredibly ungrateful,” she whispered, her voice trembling.