Being treated as though Harold had no dignity because they believed him poor did.
That evening Ethan called.
"Dad, did Simone call you?"
"She did."
"I just found out."
"Then now you know."
"I'm fixing it."
"No."
"I'm not asking permission."
"Neither am I."
Ethan went silent.
Harold continued, "Let the program stand."
"This is insane."
"Maybe."
"She's humiliating you."
"Only if I agree to be humiliated."
"That sounds like something you say when you're about to make me angry on purpose."
"I've never made you angry on purpose. It just comes naturally."
Ethan breathed out sharply. "Dad."
"Son, you want to know if Chloe can stand beside you when her mother is wrong. If you force every correction now, she never has to make that choice herself."
"So I'm supposed to watch this happen?"
"You're supposed to get married."
"I don't like it."
"Good. Means you were raised correctly."
Chloe learned about the canceled toast two days later.
Ethan found her in their bedroom holding the printed reception program in both hands.
"My mother did this?"
"Yes."
"Without asking us?"
"Yes."
She sat on the edge of the bed.
"I told her I wanted both fathers to speak."
Ethan leaned against the dresser. "What are you going to do?"
She looked up. "Don't test me."
"I'm not."
"You are. Everybody is. You, your dad, my mother, me. I'm exhausted."
"Then say no to the person creating the problem."
Her eyes flashed. "You think that's easy because nobody in your family punishes people for disagreement. My mother can go three weeks without speaking to me, then call every aunt I have and make me feel like I broke the family. She paid for my college.
She helped me through grad school. She sat by my bed when I had pneumonia at twenty-two. She's not a cartoon villain, Ethan."
"I never said she was."
"You look at her like she is."
"I look at her like she's mistreating my parents. Those can both be true."
Chloe pressed the program against her knees.
"I hate this."
Ethan sat beside her. "So do I."
"If I confront her now, she'll turn the wedding into a battlefield."
"And if you don't?"
Chloe did not answer.
The answer arrived five days before the ceremony.
Harold and Martha had made the wedding gift themselves, or at least as close to themselves as a gift of that size could be made. Years earlier, Ethan had drawn a house on graph paper during a rainy holiday weekend at the family cabin. He had been twenty-five, newly out of graduate school, and working in Brookstone's development division under a manager who did not know the founder was his father until six months into the job.