When My Parents Charged Me by the Minute for Their Love I Left Chapter 06

When My Parents Charged Me by the Minute for Their Love I Left Chapter 06

When the assistant sent over twelve years of records, the file ran to more than a hundred pages.

Dad sat in his study and went through them one page at a time.

Age seven. Family Sports Day at school. Forty-two minutes.

Age eight. Birthday dinner. Thirty-six minutes.

Age ten. Parent-teacher conference ran twenty-three minutes over. Two hundred and thirty dollars deducted

from the following month’s living allowance.

Age twelve. Appendicitis surgery ran forty minutes over. The following month’s living allowance reduced to

zero.

Age fourteen. Grandma’s memorial service. Two hours, fifty-nine minutes, and fifty-one seconds.

There was another note beneath the entry.

[Miss Madison ended the embrace on her own with nine seconds remaining. No excess time recorded.]

Mom’s breath caught when she read it.

She remembered that evening.

My face had still been wet with tears, but I had suddenly pulled away from her.

She had even smiled then and praised me for being mature and sensible.

After that, the records grew shorter and shorter.

At fifteen, I used an average of forty-seven minutes a month.

At sixteen, nineteen minutes.

At seventeen, six minutes.

For the past three months, every total had been zero.

Dad dragged the cursor back up.

“Did someone miss an entry?”

The assistant answered quietly, “No.”

“Since her first year of high school, Miss Madison has arranged for a stand-in to attend her parent-teacher conferences. She also stopped contacting either of you when she was ill.”

Dad asked, “When did she start doing that?”

The assistant gave him the date.

It was right after the conference when the teacher had kept Dad for an extra twenty-three minutes.

The colour slowly drained from Mom’s face.

“Was that two hundred and thirty dollars really deducted?”

“Yes. You personally approved it at the time.”

The cup in Mom’s hand knocked against the desk.

The next day, they went to my school.

Ms Anderson’s expression was cold when she saw them.

For once, Dad wasn’t carrying himself as though he were in a business negotiation.

“She’s gone abroad to study. Do you know which university she’s at?”

Ms Anderson shook her head.

“She asked me not to give her family any information.”

Mom’s lips moved.

“Why was she so wary of us?”

Ms Anderson looked at her for a long time.

“Because she was afraid you’d drag her back again.”

Mom’s eyes turned red.

Ms Anderson took a folder out of her drawer.

It contained every parent-teacher conference record from the past three years.

Several payment receipts were clipped beneath them.

[Parent-teacher conference stand-in: $200.]

[Midterm progress meeting: $200.]

[Senior-year college planning meeting: $200.]

Dad stared at the figures.

I would rather pay two hundred dollars to have a stranger sit there than lose two hundred and thirty just to

ask my own father to stay.

“Why didn’t she tell us?”

Ms Anderson suddenly looked up.

“She did.”

“After that first conference, she asked whether the extra time the teacher kept you could be excluded from

her 180-minute allowance.”

“Have you really forgotten what you told her?”

Dad opened his mouth, but no sound came out.

Ms Anderson continued, “In seventh grade, she went three days in a row without eating lunch.”

Mom gripped the back of the chair.

“She never told me…”

“I rang you,” Ms Anderson cut in. “You told me every choice had a price, and that if she went over the time limit, she had to live with the consequences.”

Mom stood there without moving.

It was lunchtime when they left the school.

Someone at the cafeteria counter was buying a hot chicken sandwich.

Steam and the smell of roast chicken drifted from the wrapper.

Mom stopped in the doorway and suddenly bent forward.

She braced herself against the wall and couldn’t straighten up for a long while.

Dad reached out to steady her.

Instead, she grabbed his sleeve.

“She was only twelve. Was she really that hungry?”

Dad didn’t answer.

Back in the car, he opened our message thread.

The last time I had messaged him first was eight months earlier.

[Dad, have you got time to come to the awards ceremony for my academic competition?]

His reply had been:

[Only twelve minutes remain in this month’s allowance. I do not recommend using them on a non-essential event.]

There were no more messages from me after that.

Dad stared at the screen for a long time before, for the first time, sending me a message of his own.

[I have time now.]

It wasn’t delivered.

I had already blocked his number.

He sent it again.

Still nothing.

He tried a third time, then a fourth. The screen filled with failed-delivery notices.

Dad gripped his phone and kept his head down for a long time.

He had finally realised how long it had been since I had reached out to him.