Chapter 9 - Vanessa Thought I Was Punishing Ethan for Being Different From His Father
Three days before the assault, Vanessa called me.
Not Ethan.
“Marianne, can we talk?”
“Yes.”
“Why are you blocking Harbor House?”
“I’m not blocking it.”
“Rowan is.”
“You can override them.”
“Not safely.”
She exhaled.
“This is exactly what Robert did.”
“What?”
“Treat Ethan like every risk proves something about his character.”
“That’s unfair.”
“Is it?”
She continued.
“Ethan has spent his entire life hearing how his father built all this.”
“Then every time he tries to build something himself, he gets told he’s reckless.”
That hit.
Because there was truth inside:
it.
Vanessa said:
“You people handed him an inheritance and then made him feel ashamed for wanting to use it.”
I answered:
“It isn’t his yet.”
She went quiet.
Then:
“There.”
“What?”
“That sentence.”
“He is thirty-nine.”
“You still talk about him like a child.”
I was angry.
Then unsettled.
Because sometimes entitlement survives on:
an unfair system.
That does not make entitlement healthy.
But it helps explain why the person thinks they are:
taking,
not stealing.
Three days later, she kicked those papers toward me on the patio.
By then, whatever legitimate frustration existed had become:
coercion.
May you like
That distinction mattered.
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