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The day both families were to meet formally and discuss the engagement.
Just as I was heading out the door, my father suddenly stopped me.
"Go half an hour late."
I stared at him, confused.
He said,
"If they truly respect you, waiting another half hour won't matter to them."
"And if they don't, half an hour of waiting is enough for them to show their true faces."
I thought he was being far too suspicious.
Until I reached the private dining room, its door left ajar, and heard my boyfriend's mother say with a cold sneer,
"Son, Carina Fox's just some little slip of a girl. So what if her salary's a bit higher and her family's a bit better off? Today of all days, coming to formally discuss the engagement, and she dares make us wait, dares put on airs. Who does she think she is!"
"Once they're married, I'll show her. However capable she is, she's quitting that job and coming home to have babies."
His father nodded.
"Exactly. For a girl like her, I say we offer ten thousand and one in engagement money, just to make a point."
"But that apartment she's bringing as dowry, my son's name goes on it afterward."
And my boyfriend, who had always held me in the palm of his hand, didn't defend me at all. Instead he chimed right in.
"Mom, Dad, you're both right. But you can't rush these things."
"Listen to me. Wait until we're married, until she's pregnant, then we bring it up."
Standing outside that door, I finally understood.
What Calvin called love was nothing but arsenic wrapped in honey.
I just hadn't seen it clearly, all this time.
I didn't shout, didn't make a scene. I only took my father's hand.
"Dad, you were right. Calvin isn't worth it."
"There's no need for this marriage. And the promotion we promised him, cancel that too."
……
Just before we left, my father suddenly stopped me.
I froze for a second, thinking he'd changed his mind.
After all, from the very first meeting, my father had said Calvin was calculating, not to be trusted.
"Why?"
My father looked at me, his expression serious.
"Let me take one last look at him for you."
I couldn't help laughing.
"Dad, today's the formal family meeting to discuss the engagement. It's not an exam."
"Showing up half an hour late is so rude."
But my father shook his head.
"If they truly care about you, the only thing they'll worry about in that half hour is whether something happened to you."
"If they don't care about you, or they've been unhappy all along, that half hour is enough for them to say everything they've been hiding."
I still thought he was overthinking it.
Calvin had pursued me for a year.
Through that whole year, nothing stopped him.
When I worked until dawn, he'd wait three hours outside my office building just to drive me home.
When I mentioned offhand that I liked the desserts from a certain bakery, the next day he stood in line for four hours to buy them for me.
Even though my father had always been cool toward him, he never once complained.
He'd comfort me instead.
"Carrie, your dad is a responsible father. He's hard on me because he loves you too much."
"And I'll keep working at it, until I prove myself to your dad!"
Then there were his parents.
The first time his father came to our home, he'd prepared a dozen dishes, all my favorites.
His mother went even further, mailing me her own home-cooked food and brown sugar every holiday, and she'd told me she completely respected my choice to stay child-free, never once bringing up kids.
A family like that.
How could they be anything like what my father said?
But looking at the insistence in my father's eyes, I gave in.
"Fine. Just half an hour late."
"Any more than that would be rude!"
My father nodded.
"Half an hour. That's enough."
With that, he took the car keys and set off.
Not to the restaurant we'd agreed on, though, but to the coffee shop next door.
"We'll sit here. In fifteen minutes we'll go find them."
Soon it was past ten, the time we'd set, five minutes over.
A message came in from Calvin.
Something warmed in my chest, and I smiled and waved my phone at my father.
"See? I told you. He's definitely worried about me."
But when I opened the chat, there was only a single short line.
【You here yet?】
Nothing else. Not a second sentence.
He knew perfectly well I hated being late more than anything. In two years together I had never once been late.
Yet he didn't ask if something had happened, if I needed help.
Not even a single 'stay safe.'
An odd little pang of disappointment went through me, but I quickly found an excuse for him.
Today was the first time both sets of parents were meeting formally, after all.
I was late.
Caught in the middle, he probably felt awful too.
It made sense that he'd be unhappy.
The minutes crawled by.
Ten minutes passed.
Still no message from Calvin, no call either.
Every second dragged like a year, and at last I made it to the fifteen-minute mark.
I stood up at once.
I couldn't even finish the coffee I usually loved.
"Dad, it's time. Let's hurry over."
My father set down his teacup and nodded.
"Let's go."
The hotel was right next door, only a few dozen steps away.
But the closer I got to the private room, the more inexplicably nervous I became.
Thinking to myself that I really ought to apologize for being late.
After all, I'd kept them waiting a long time.
When we reached the door of the private room, a burst of scolding came from inside.
The waiter was just about to push the door open for us.
But my father suddenly raised a hand, motioning for us to wait.
I was still puzzled when Camille James's shrill voice came through the gap in the unclosed door, perfectly clear.
"Son, Carina's just some little slip of a girl. So what if her salary's a bit higher and her family's a bit better off?"
"The very first meeting, and she dares make us wait, dares put on airs. Who does she think she is!"
