For a long time, nobody spoke. The ocean glittered outside the windows, and somewhere far below, the engines hummed.
Finally, Dad looked up at me. His eyes were wet.
“Why are you showing me this?” he asked. “After what I said to you?”
I thought about it.
“Because you’re my father,” I said. “You stood in a courtroom when I was eight years old and told a judge you wanted me. I still have the picture. Me in a yellow dress, holding your hand on the courthouse steps.” My voice cracked. “You taught me to change a tire. You walked me into my first day of high school. Whatever you said in that buffet, you were my dad for twenty-seven years. I’m not going to watch some con man take your business because you’re too proud to see it.”
Dad stared at me. Then, for the first time in my life, I watched my father cry.
He didn’t sob. He just sat at that glass table in a penthouse suite on a cruise ship his daughter paid for while tears ran down his peeling cheeks, and he didn’t wipe them away.
“I didn’t mean it,” he said hoarsely. “What I said. About you coming with the house.”
“Then why did you say it?”
He was quiet for a long time.
“Because Brandon kept saying it,” he said finally. “Not in those words. But he’d say things like, ‘Millie’s always acting like she’s above everybody. Millie thinks she owns you because she lent you money. She’s not even really a Miller.’ And I’d get angry. Not at him. At you.” He shook his head. “Because he was right that I owed you. I’ve owed you for years, and I hated it. A man’s supposed to take care of his kids. Not the other way around.”
“Dad…”
“Every time you wrote a check, I felt like less of a man,” he said. “And Brandon figured that out. He knew exactly what to say.”
Mom was crying now too.
“He told your father you’d ruin everything,” she said to me. “He said if you came on this trip, you’d find out about the partnership and humiliate Richard in front of everyone. He said the only way to protect the family was to keep you away.”
“Protect the family,” I repeated.
Uncle Ray let out a short, humorless laugh. “Classic.”
Dad wiped his face with the back of his hand.
“What do I do?” he said. It wasn’t a demand. He was asking me.
“Don’t sign anything,” I said. “Not tomorrow, not ever, not with Brandon. And talk to Vanessa before he proposes tonight.”
Dad looked stricken. “Tonight? He’s got the ring. He’s going to do it at the captain’s dinner, in front of everybody.”
“Then you’d better talk to her first,” I said.
Vanessa didn’t believe us.
We found her in her interior cabin on deck two, getting ready for the captain’s dinner. The room was so small that with Dad, Mom, Uncle Ray, and me crammed inside, we could barely move. Brandon had gone to pick up his rented tuxedo from the formal wear shop on deck five. That cost $89, which he charged to Vanessa’s onboard account.
She was sitting on the narrow bed curling her hair. When she saw me in the doorway, her face twisted.
“What is she doing here?”
“Vanessa, honey, we need to talk to you,” Mom said gently.
Dad showed her the court records on my laptop. Vanessa read them in silence, and when she finished, she shoved the laptop back at me so hard I almost dropped it.
“This is fake,” she said. “Millie made this up.”
“Vanessa, those are public court records,” I said. “Anybody can look them up. I’ll show you how.”
“You’re just jealous!” She stood up, and her curling iron clattered against the tiny vanity. “You’ve always been jealous of me! You can’t stand that I’m getting married and you’re thirty-three and alone in your stupid condo with your stupid spreadsheets!”
“Vanessa,” Dad said sharply.
“No! She ruined this whole trip! She took away our drinks and our rooms and our excursions, and now she’s trying to ruin my engagement!” Vanessa was crying now, mascara running. “Why can’t you let me have one thing, Millie? One thing!”
I didn’t argue. I just put my laptop down on her bed with the screen still open to Kelsey Morrow’s complaint.
“Read it when you’re alone,” I said quietly. “Kelsey Morrow is real. She lives in Englewood. She’s a dental hygienist. She lent Brandon $23,400 out of her 401(k) for a duplex renovation, and there was no duplex. He stopped answering her calls three weeks after the wire went through.” I swallowed. “Vanessa, I don’t want you to be the next Kelsey. That’s all.”
Then I walked out.
Dad followed me into the narrow hallway, with the engine thrumming under our feet.
“She’ll come around,” he said.
“Maybe,” I said. “Maybe not. But she knows now.”
