She Wouldn’t Accept the Reunion at Her Door

By the time I turned into our picture-perfect suburban driveway, the porch lamps had come on. A wreath sat dead center on the front door, autumn leaves arranged just so. The place looked ready for a camera crew. It always did.

I let myself in and shut the door behind me. Vanilla and cinnamon lingered in the air, the sweet aftertaste of one of Mom’s seasonal baking shoots.

“Mom?” I called, setting my keys down on the entry table harder than I meant to.

“Back here, honey!” Nina sang from her office. Even from down the hall, her voice sounded bright enough to belong in a finished video.

I found her at her desk, surrounded by the blue light of two broad monitors. Blue-light glasses framed her eyes as she skimmed along an editing timeline. The ring light beside the shelves was dark.

She turned at the sound of my steps and smiled. “Hi. How was class? I’ve got the Thanksgiving sponsor cut nearly done. We should make the posting window.”

“I saw Daniel today.”

Her fingers stopped over the mouse. Her smile held for a second, then tightened at the edges. Nina turned her chair toward me with deliberate care.

“You did?” Her voice dropped into a softer register. “Aria, why didn’t you say anything? I could have come. You shouldn’t have to handle him by yourself.”

“I didn’t need you to manage the conversation.” I crossed the threshold and stayed standing.

Nina removed her glasses and laid them beside the keyboard. “I know you’re angry about the surprise. I got it wrong, and I apologized. But you need to remember what he’s like. He can make you feel sorry for him.”

“He showed me the emails.”

The computer fan gave a thin, steady hiss. Nothing else moved. Nina watched my face, not with surprise, but with the careful attention of someone measuring what had escaped her control.

“He let me read the messages from Apex Management,” I said. “I saw the agreement, the forty-five-thousand-dollar fee for appearing, and the note you sent him from your private email.”

I took another step toward her desk. “You warned him you’d seek a restraining order if he refused to go along with the surprise.”

Nina glanced briefly toward the hall, then returned her gaze to me. Her breath came out slowly. When she answered, the warmth she used for the camera was gone.

“He had no business showing you those emails.”

“No business?” I gave a short, disbelieving laugh. “You arranged my reunion with my father for a sponsor. You set up the meeting and put a price on him showing up at our house.”

“I was trying to keep us secure!” Nina shot to her feet. Her chair slid back and knocked into the wall. “You think this life just appears? The mortgage, your school, the car you drove here—where do you think that money comes from?”

“I think you turned what hurt me into a video.” My voice shook. I hadn’t known anger could feel so steady and so close to breaking.

“I made use of what we had!” she shouted, pointing toward the floor between us. “He left us buried in debt, Aria. Eighty thousand dollars, and a notice saying we could lose the house. I made something out of what he ruined.”

Her finger dropped. “I kept you safe. I gave you a good life. The audience had stopped growing, and sponsors were backing away. The channel needed a story people would follow. He owed us, so I made him part of it.”

“That wasn’t for us.” My eyes burned, and tears slipped down before I could stop them. “You did it for the channel. The numbers matter more to you than I do.”

“That isn’t true.” Nina came around the desk, hands lifting as if she could calm me with the same gesture she used on camera. “Everything I do, I do for this family.”

“Then stop the Rebuilding Family series,” I said. I wiped my face with my sleeve. “Call Apex and end the deal. Tell the sponsors we won’t make it. Show me our family means more than your brand.”

She halted with her hands still raised. Slowly, she let them fall. Her eyes drifted to the second monitor, where the dark screen reflected the room without showing us clearly.

The silence lengthened. I watched her face, waiting for the answer she was already giving me by not looking at me.

“You can’t do it, can you?” I said, barely above a whisper.

Nina closed her eyes. One tear traced a line through the makeup she had applied so carefully. When she spoke, her voice had almost disappeared.

“The advance,” she said. “Apex put together two hundred and fifty thousand dollars for the six episodes. Half was paid when we signed.”

My stomach seemed to drop through the floor. I looked at her, trying to keep my voice level. “And what happened to the money?”

Nina opened her eyes. Her face no longer held its polished smile, only the strain underneath it. “I already got the advance,” she said. “And I spent it.”