“Dad, three hours ago, you whispered to Mom that you were finally done wasting money on this failure.”
The color drained from his face. He had forgotten I was sitting close enough to hear him. Or maybe he just had not cared at the time.
“I didn’t mean—that was just—I was frustrated about the expense, not about you personally.”
“You told Aunt Linda that the money would have been better spent on Marcus’s law degree,” I continued. “You’ve introduced me to your colleagues as our daughter who’s studying something with science. You gave Marcus a new BMW for graduating high school, but when I graduated valedictorian, you took us to Applebee’s.”
Each example hit like a physical blow. I was not trying to be cruel, but four years of accumulated dismissal and condescension had to be addressed if we were going to have any kind of honest relationship moving forward.
“I think,” Mom said carefully, “that we’ve made some serious mistakes in how we’ve supported you. Or failed to support you.”
“The question now,” I said, “is what happens next?”
It was a fair question. In three months, I would be moving to Boston to begin medical school. Eight years of education stretched ahead of me, followed by residency, fellowship, and hopefully a career in academic medicine. I was about to embark on a path that would likely keep me busy and geographically distant for the next decade.
Did I want my family to be part of that journey? Did they want to be part of it? And if so, how did we rebuild a relationship that had been based on their fundamental misunderstanding of who I was and what I was capable of?
“We’d like to be better,” Dad said finally. “We’d like to understand what you’re doing and support it properly, if you’ll give us the chance.”
“We’re proud of you,” Mom added, and her voice caught slightly. “We should have been proud of you all along, but we’re proud of you now. Harvard Medical School, Sarah. Our daughter is going to Harvard Medical School.”
“That sounds wonderful,” Dad said, though I could tell he was still processing the fact that his failure daughter had been personally recruited by Harvard Medical School.
“The position pays forty-eight thousand dollars for three months,” I continued. “Plus research publication bonuses. Dr. Hendricks thinks we’ll have two more papers accepted before I leave for Boston.”
Forty-eight thousand dollars for a summer research position. That was more than Marcus had made in his entire first year out of law school, back when he was actually practicing law instead of finding himself in the pool house.
“Forty-eight thousand,” Emma repeated. “For three months?”