My father’s eyes moved slowly across the line items, reading the merchant names.

“Neiman Marcus,” he read aloud, his voice barely audible.

“Dad, please,” Megan cried, reaching out to touch his shoulder.

“Delta Airlines,” he continued, ignoring her hand.

“She had to travel for the treatments,” my mother said, her voice desperate, pleading. “You know she couldn’t take a bus.”

“First class, Mom?” I asked. “To Cabo?”

I scrolled down to show the hotel charges.

The silence that followed was heavy, pressing down on the small room like the humid air before a summer storm.

My father slowly took off his glasses.

He folded them with one hand, his knuckles white.

He looked at Megan, really looked at her, for the first time in ten years.

She was standing fully upright, her knees locked, her face pale.

“Explain this,” my father said.

“It’s not what it looks like,” Megan stammered, stepping back toward the kitchen counter.

“Explain the thirty thousand dollars from November,” my father said.

He stood up, his chair scraping loudly against the floor.

“That was for the surgery,” he said. “The one we took the second mortgage for.”