They were half right about Dad.
He hated conflict, but he loved Norah more.
And so do I.
The ski trip was the first domino, but it didn’t fall the way I expected.
I’d figured Trish would find out when she tried to check the reservation online or when she called Snowshoe to ask about adding spa packages the way she did every year.
Instead, she found out because she’d already been telling people about it.
My cousin April texted me on a Tuesday afternoon.
“Trish just posted about the Snowshoe trip in the family group chat. She’s telling everyone to start shopping for ski gear. Thought you should know.”
I checked the group chat.
I’m in it, but I never post.
Sure enough, Trish had written:
“Ski trip is January 15th to 20th. Start thinking about what you want to do this year. Blake’s got us the two big cabins again. It’s going to be amazing.”
Followed by a ski emoji and a snowflake emoji and one of those celebration emojis with the confetti.
I didn’t respond.
I waited.
Three days later, Trish called me.
I could hear it in her voice before she said a single word.
That particular frequency where confusion and anger haven’t fully separated yet.
“Blake, I just called Snowshoe to ask about the hot tub cabin, and they said our reservation was canceled. They said you canceled it three weeks ago.”
“That’s right.”
Silence.
“What do you mean, that’s right?”
“The trip is in January. I canceled it.”
“Why? Is there a problem with dates? Are we doing a different resort?”
“No. I canceled the trip.”
More silence.
Longer this time.
I heard Doug in the background asking what was wrong.
Trish covered the phone for a second, then came back.
“Blake, that trip is for the whole family. Connor has been talking about it since March. You can’t just cancel it without telling anyone.”
“I can. It was my reservation, my credit card, my money. I canceled it. There is no trip.”
“Is this about the graduation party? Are you seriously still upset about that?”
I sat down at my kitchen table.
I had the screenshots printed.
I’d printed them the day after I found them.
Two pages, color, on my home printer.
I’d been carrying them in a folder next to my laptop for three weeks, waiting for exactly this moment.
“Trish, I’m going to read you something. On June fourth, three days before the party, you texted Mom: ‘Connor’s going to be impossible at this thing. There’s nothing for kids to do. I’m just going to let him do whatever.’”
Dead silence on the phone.
“Mom replied, ‘Good. Let him. She needs to be taken down a peg. Walking around like she invented college.’”
I heard Trish’s breathing change.
Shorter. Faster.
“Then you wrote, ‘Should I let him open the presents? He’s been asking.’ And Mom wrote back, ‘Just make sure he does it before the cake. I want to see her face.’”
Nothing.
Absolute nothing on the other end.
I could hear a clock ticking somewhere in Trish’s house.
I could hear Connor’s voice in another room, playing a video game.
Then Trish said very quietly, in a voice I’d never heard from her before:
“Mom said you’d never find out.”
And there it was.
Not “Those texts aren’t real.”
Not “You’re taking it out of context.”
Not “I can explain.”
Just confirmation.
Mom said you’d never find out.
Like the only problem with planning the sabotage of a teenage girl’s graduation party was operational security.
“Well,” I said, “she was wrong.”
“Blake, listen to me. Connor just gets worked up. He didn’t mean to throw the letter in the pool. That part wasn’t planned. He just got carried away, and we figured it wasn’t worth making a scene about.”
“You filmed it, Trish. You posted it to your Instagram story. Thirty-seven people saw you caption my daughter’s humiliation with a laughing emoji.”
“That was just for fun. I didn’t mean anything by it.”
“You captioned it, ‘Connor keeping it real.’ You thought it was funny.”
“Blake, you’re blowing this out of proportion.”
I looked at the printed texts on the table.
I want to see her face.
“No, I think I’ve got the proportions about right.”
“So what? You cancel one ski trip and you feel like a big man? You think that fixes anything?”