Chapter 3

I tightened my grip on the phone.

Dragging my dead mother into it again.

When my mother was still alive, it was my father who ruined her name.

He never worked. All he liked to do was play mahjong, and whenever he ran out of money, he'd hold his hand out to her.

But to everyone else, he told it the other way around: my mother was the one who loved mahjong, my mother was the one always begging him for money.

He said she and her side of the family were cold and grasping.

Said they came to him for money at every holiday, said he was the one man supporting that whole crowd of her relatives.

My father's relatives sided completely with him.

Nobody bothered to check. Nobody cared whether any of it was true.

All they cared about was that my father had been wronged, which meant every fault belonged to my mother.

The day after she died, my father emptied out all of her money. He wouldn't even pay for a funeral.

That was when things broke between us, and I never went back.

So now, without knowing a single fact, where did he get the nerve to promise compensation on my behalf?

And my uncle, as shameless as ever.

Back when I wanted to open the shop, my father and my uncle both did everything they could to stop me.

I still remember every ugly thing they said: that a woman should stay home tending to a husband and children, not go parading herself around running a store.

And now the flower shop I built with my own sweat, they wanted me to just hand half the profits to his son?

3.

My father pushed on. "You're the one who's in the wrong here, so don't go acting like the victim."

"Refund your cousin's fifty-two hundred right now and pay another fifty thousand on top. From here on out, half your profits go to Morton every month, and Morton quits his job to run the flower shop with you."

It was almost funny.

I hadn't said a word. He hadn't even given me time to explain.

He'd just gone ahead and agreed to the compensation for me, and now he wanted me to sign away half my profits?

I could only say one thing: not a chance.

"Whoever agreed to the compensation can go pay it. And you want a cut of my shop? Dream on."

"Hey! You ungrateful little brat!" My father was beside himself. "Is that any way to talk to your own father?"

"Having your cousin help run the shop is a privilege for you. A woman parading herself around doing business out there, it's not proper to begin with!"

So now he remembered he was my father?

Openly, quietly, he took the outsiders' side every time. I couldn't see one thing about him that looked like my own flesh and blood.

Morton couldn't wait to jump in.

"Exactly! Me coming down to help with your flower shop, that's for your own good!"

"You really think a man of thirty-five would give up a steady job for that little dump of yours otherwise?"