Billionaire Brother Gave Me an Empty Card Now I'm Dumpster-Diving Thanks for the Love novel · Chapter 22 of 24

Chapter 22: Five Places

My father apologized on the front steps of the Kessling Foundation at nine on Saturday morning.

He did it in front of reporters, the campus paper, forty staff in winter coats and anyone who had stopped on the sidewalk.

Mom stood on his left, and I stood on his right with Brynn.

Dad had written nothing down.

"My son stole from this family and from the people this Foundation exists to feed," he said, in his hard, straight voice. "I did not see it. I did not look."

A camera clicked.

"My daughter Erin came home to us a month before that was known. She was hungry. She told nobody. She ate from the bins behind a bakery because she was afraid that if she asked her family for help, we would call her greedy."

He stopped.

I saw his jaw work.

"We did that to her," he said. "Her mother and I. We were so afraid of buying her love that we left her to starve. I'm sorry, Erin. I say it here because I let you be ashamed in public, and I owe you the same in public."

Somebody in the crowd was crying.

I took his hand.

It was stiff and cold, and it closed around mine so hard it hurt the stitches.

I didn't tell him.

Sunday afternoon the kitchen smelled of onions, and Mom and I were elbow to elbow at the stove.

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