Proof that underneath the vanity, the greed, the social climbing, there might still be something human in them. That maybe, stripped of image and advantage, they could still love a son, a brother, a person, for reasons that had nothing to do with money or status.
So I watched.
And I learned.
At family dinners, I was expected to attend but never welcomed. I sat at the far end of the table, often in the odd chair from the breakfast nook because the “good” dining chairs were reserved for real guests and real sons. They talked over me, around me, through me. Never to me. If Tyler launched into another polished fiction about closing a six-million-dollar deal, everyone leaned in. If I mentioned something ordinary—an annoying coworker, a funny thing I overheard, a long shift—my mother would physically get up in the middle of my sentence and go do something else.
“Ethan,” she once said, already halfway to the kitchen, “we’re trying to enjoy dinner. Nobody wants to hear about cleaning bathrooms.”
My father was worse in subtler ways.