Chapter 3 - The Mask Drops
A suffocating silence descended over the room. The fifty-odd relatives—aunts, uncles, cousins who had arrived from three different states—froze mid-bite. Some looked down at their plates in awkward embarrassment, but several exchanged knowing smirks, clearly agreeing with Robert’s twisted philosophy.
Thomas stood directly in front of his parents. Up until that moment, he had spent his entire adulthood absorbing their passive-aggressive jabs. He had excused Robert’s snide remarks about his broken engagements. He had forgiven Helen when she gave his children cheap dollar-store toys for Christmas while buying five-hundred-dollar watches for his sister Evelyn’s children. He had convinced himself that if he just gave enough, worked enough, and succeeded enough, they would finally see him as worthy.
Looking into his father’s smug eyes and his mother’s bored expression, the scales fell completely from his eyes.
"Their place?" Thomas’s voice was remarkably low, but it possessed a terrifying gravity that made Helen shift uncomfortably in her upholstered chair. "You think their place is bussing dirty tables at a party I funded?"
"Oh, stop being so dramatic, Thomas!" Helen scoffed, waving a dismissive hand. She looked around the room, inviting the relatives into her performance of the long-suffering mother. "A little chores never killed anyone. In our day, children contributed to the family instead of being treated like fragile little princes and princesses. You coddle them because you feel guilty about failing their mothers."
The cruelty of the jab was deliberate. It was designed to strike his deepest wound, to put him on the defensive in front of the entire extended family.
For years, it had worked. But today, Thomas didn't flinch.
Rebecca had walked over to her father’s side, her eyes red from holding back tears, her fingers still gray and damp from the dirty washcloth. Jacob ran and hid his face against Thomas’s thigh, his tiny body trembling.
"They didn't just give us chores, Dad," Rebecca whispered, her voice cracking across the silent room. "Grandpa told the venue staff to send the real busboys home early so they wouldn't have to tip them. He took the hundred-dollar bill you left on the counter for the kitchen staff and put it in his pocket."
Robert’s face instantly flushed crimson. He slammed his fork onto the porcelain plate with a violent crack. "Watch your mouth, girl! Speak when you're spoken to! Thomas, you discipline this disrespectful child right now, or I swear to God—"
"You won't touch her," Thomas cut in, his voice rising, every muscle in his neck taut. "You won't raise your voice at her, and you will never, in your miserable life, speak to my children like that again."
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"How dare you!" Helen gasped, clutching her pearls in textbook theatrical outrage. "To your own father? On my seventieth birthday? After everything we sacrificed for you?"
"Sacrificed?" Thomas laughed bitterly, the sound echoing hollowly off the high ceiling. "Tell them, Helen. Tell everyone in this room exactly what you sacrificed."
