Daniel arrived the following Saturday.<\/p>\n
He looked older than I remembered, with gray at his temples and deep lines around his eyes.<\/p>\n
Logan stood in the living room with his arms folded.<\/p>\n
Andrew played on the floor, unaware of the tension.<\/p>\n
Daniel tried to hug Logan.<\/p>\n
My son stepped back.<\/p>\n
"Why didn't you tell me you couldn't afford to help?"<\/p>\n
Daniel lowered his arms.<\/p>\n
"I didn't want you to worry."<\/p>\n
Logan let out a short laugh.<\/p>\n
"That's what Mom says."<\/p>\n
I felt the truth of it settle over the room.<\/p>\n
Daniel admitted that he had been struggling financially and had been ashamed to tell his children.<\/p>\n
He said he had intended to make things right once his business recovered.<\/p>\n
Logan looked at him.<\/p>\n
"How much did you borrow from me?"<\/p>\n
Daniel's face changed.<\/p>\n
I turned toward my son.<\/p>\n
"What?"<\/p>\n
Logan went upstairs and returned with his notebook.<\/p>\n
He opened it to a page filled with dates and amounts.<\/p>\n
Months earlier, Daniel had asked Logan to lend him money from his savings, promising to return it within two weeks.<\/p>\n
Logan had agreed.<\/p>\n
Then Daniel asked again.<\/p>\n
And again.<\/p>\n
The amounts were small enough that Logan had never thought to tell me, but together they represented nearly every dollar he had saved from birthday gifts and odd jobs.<\/p>\n
Daniel looked ashamed.<\/p>\n
"I was going to pay you back."<\/p>\n
"When?" Logan asked.<\/p>\n
"I don't know."<\/p>\n
"Then why did you keep asking?"<\/p>\n
Daniel sat down.<\/p>\n
He had no convincing answer.<\/p>\n
I felt anger rising in my chest, but I looked at Logan first.<\/p>\n
"Did you give him that money because you were afraid something bad would happen if you didn't?"<\/p>\n
Logan shook his head.<\/p>\n
"Not exactly."<\/p>\n
He stared at his father.<\/p>\n
"I gave it to him because I thought maybe if I helped him, he'd start coming around again."<\/p>\n
The room went silent.<\/p>\n
Daniel covered his face.<\/p>\n
I had known that my son missed his father.<\/p>\n
I hadn't known he was trying to buy back his attention with the little money he had.<\/p>\n
Daniel arrived the following Saturday. He looked older than I remembered, with gray at his temples and deep lines around his eyes. Logan stood in the living room with his … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":40494,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40503","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-insightdrama"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40503","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=40503"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40503\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40523,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40503\/revisions\/40523"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/40494"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=40503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=40503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=40503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}