A small pang of guilt lands right at the center of my chest. She’s so excited and happy because she thinks we’re married for real…and she’s going to be heartbroken when it all ends.
That ache in my chest deepens. Who am I kidding? I will be too.
I shake my head and hope my smile looks unbothered. “Mom, you and Dad deserve to keep this money. After all that you’ve done for me, all the money you spent on me when I was sick as a kid, all the things you missed out on because you were taking care of me…”
A lump lodges in my throat just thinking about it all. All the extra shifts they worked to pay for my medicine and trips to the ER. All the hours spent on the phone fighting with insurancecompanies. All the money they could have spent on themselves, they spent on me.
“Oh, sweetheart.” Mom cups my face in her hands. “You think you were a burden on us?”
I sniffle. “Yeah. I mean, look at how much you guys did for me.”
“You’re our daughter, Ellie. Our baby. We’d do anything in the world for you.”
“Yeah, but, Mom, all that money you spent on me. It should have gone to you guys. If you didn’t have to take care of me when I was sick all the time as a kid, you would have had so much more. You wouldn’t have gone into debt…”
She shakes her head, cutting me off. “Ellie, sweetheart. Will you stop focusing on that? Your father and I don’t think about it that way. At all.”
I blink at her. “You’re not even a little upset that my medicine and treatments cost so much?”
“Of course we’re upset, but not at you. We were upset at insurance companies because of how difficult they made it for you to get the care you needed. At the hospitals that refused to treat you properly.” She pauses. “But we were never upset with you. Ever. You’re our daughter, and we did whatever we needed to do to take care of you. Because we love you. And anything in the world is worth doing for your child.”
Emotion tightens my chest and throat hearing her say that.
She hugs me again. “All these years, did you think we were secretly upset with you?”
I shake my head and hold her tight. “No. I just felt guilty because of how much you’ve done for me.” I sniffle. “That’s why I didn’t make a big deal about you guys coming to the wedding. I didn’t want you to have to put your vacation on hold to accommodate me. You missed out on so many vacations because of me already.”
“Oh, Ellie. We would have happily dropped everything to see you get married.”
That guilt from earlier gnaws deeper. “I’m sorry, Mom.”
“It’s okay. I’m just thrilled to see how happy you are. That’s all that matters.”
When we break our hug, we both dab at our eyes. I catch Camden giving me a concerned look, but I smile at him.
Dad just chuckles. “That’s how most of the conversations go in this family. Crying and hugging and laughing. We’re an emotional bunch.”
Mom and I chuckle. After a second, so does Camden.
We all sit down at the table to eat. Dad grabs a bottle of sparkling wine from the cooler and pops it open, then pours it into plastic cups for us.
Mom raises her cup. “A toast to our daughter and new son-in-law. Camden, welcome to the family.”
Camden smiles as we all tap our glasses, then dig into lunch. We visit for the next couple of hours.
Dad checks the time. “We’d better hit the road if we want to make it to the other side of the island before dark.”
We follow them to a gas station so we can all fuel up. When Camden discreetly pays for their gas and refuses to take money from Dad, that warm and fuzzy feeling swoops through me once more.
Camden shakes his head at my Dad’s protests. “You came all the way over here to meet us and cooked lunch for us. This is my way of saying thank you.”
Dad pulls him into a hug. “Take care of my little girl,” he says.
“Dad,” I groan.
Camden just smiles and nods at my dad. “Promise I will.”
We all hug and say goodbye, then drive back to the rental at Shawnigan Lake.
