Finding out that the family roles I had accepted as facts were only stories repeated until they felt permanent.
My father called me once from federal detention before sentencing.
I almost didn’t answer.
Then I did.
He sounded older.
“Sylvie.”
“Hello, Dad.”
He spent several minutes telling me lawyers had exaggerated things.
That corporations were protecting themselves.
That Grandma had poisoned me against him.
That Mom was unstable.
The same pattern.
Everyone wrong except Robert Prescott.
Finally he said:
“You think you’ve won.”
I looked around my Wexford office.
On the wall hung a framed copy of Grandma’s original engineering memo.
Beside it hung Mom’s mathematical framework.
“No,” I said.
“Then what?”
“I think I stopped playing.”
Silence.
He exhaled bitterly.
“You were always her favorite.”
I almost answered defensively.
Then I understood.
He had been competing with me too.
A grown man competing with his daughter for the love of the woman who raised him.
