The money was one thing. The words were another.
My father had a way of cutting you down so casually that you almost didn’t notice you were bleeding. He’d say things at family dinners, at holidays, in front of guests—things that sounded like jokes but felt like knives.
“Dalia is still doing something in San Francisco. We’re not really sure what.”
I’m a senior financial analyst. I manage a portfolio worth $14 million. I make $127,000 a year, and I’ve been rated “exceeds expectations” for three consecutive years. But to my father, I was always “doing something.”
“Why can’t you be more like your brother?”
Derek, who still lives in the house Dad bought him. Derek, who’s never had to make a car payment or worry about health insurance. Derek, who got a promotion to vice president of operations at Foster Motors despite having no operations experience whatsoever.
“Good thing you’re pretty. Someone might marry you.”
He said that at Thanksgiving 2023 in front of his business partners. Everyone laughed. I excused myself to the bathroom and cried for ten minutes, then came back and smiled through dessert.
That was my life. Smile through the pain. Don’t make waves. Don’t embarrass the family.
Then I met Marcus.
January 2024, a mutual friend’s birthday party in the city. He was tall, calm, and he listened. Really listened when I talked. Three dates in, I realized I’d never had someone ask me so many questions about my life without trying to one-up me or change the subject.
Four months later, he came to his first Foster family dinner. And for the first time, someone asked me the question I’d been avoiding for twenty-nine years.
April 2024. My parents’ house in Sacramento. The dining room with the mahogany table my father loves to brag cost $12,000. Marcus sat next to me, polite and composed, while my father held court at the head of the table. The usual performance—stories about the dealership, humblebrags about his latest golf score, pointed comments about Derek’s bright future.
Then Dad turned to Marcus.
“So, you’re the new boyfriend?” He didn’t phrase it as a question. “Hope you’re not planning to run off like the last few. Dalia has a habit of scaring men away.”
I felt my face flush.
“Dad—”
“I’m just saying.” He shrugged, cutting his steak. “You’ve got to wonder what’s wrong with a girl when she can’t keep a man past six months.”
Marcus said nothing. He finished his meal, complimented my mother’s cooking, and shook my father’s hand on the way out.
But in the car, fifteen minutes into the drive back to the city, he pulled over to the side of the road and turned to me.
“Does your father always talk to you like that?”
I opened my mouth to defend him, to explain, to minimize. Instead, I burst into tears.
Forty minutes.
That’s how long I cried in that car, parked on the shoulder of I-80, while Marcus held my hand and didn’t say a word. When I finally stopped, he asked me one more question.
“Do you know that what he says to you isn’t normal?”
I didn’t have an answer.
But that night, after he dropped me off, Marcus started keeping notes. Dates. Quotes. Witnesses. He didn’t tell me. He just started building a file.
I wouldn’t find out about it until four months later.
Marcus proposed in May 2024. A quiet evening at our favorite restaurant in Sausalito, overlooking the bay. No flash mob, no skywriting, no viral video—just him, me, and a simple question.
I said yes before he finished asking.
The next morning, I called my parents to share the news. My mother cried happy tears.
My father had a different reaction.
“I’ll handle the wedding,” he announced. “I’ll take care of everything. Consider it my gift.”
It sounded generous.
It wasn’t.
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