“Gabriella, stop,” Dad said. His tone was kind but firm. Loving but fatherly. He held out the envelope to me. “This is for you. Your mother and I have been doing a lot of thinking and talking, and we’re worried about you. You’re a homeowner now, and this job of yours doesn’t sound like there’s much room for growth or a salary increase. It would ease our minds if you took this and kept it as a buffer.”
I knew without having to open the envelope what was inside. “How much?”
“Open it.”
Sighing, I slid my finger under the glue and tore the envelope open. A second later, I withdrew a check with my father’s neat printing. My eyes fell to all the zeros that came after the five. They wanted to give me half a million dollars. Chances were they wanted to give me more than that, but they knew I wouldn’t accept it, so they’d settled on what they thought was a reasonable amount.
My cheeks burned.
It was no secret that my job was nothing special, and my boss was a jerk, but it was my lackluster job and my douche-canoe boss. Even if things weren’t moving as quickly as I wanted and I admittedly did feel a little stuck, I had faith that everything would work out, and accepting this check would only bring me bad karma.
I shook my head. “I can’t take this.”
“We won’t take it back,” Mom said.
“Fine, then I won’t cash it.”
“That’s okay too,” Dad said. “But if things change and you’re in a pinch, this is yours. We know you want to carve your own path, Gabriella, but we all need a safety net in case things don’t go according to plan.”
In other words, we don’t believe you can pull off this whole setting-out-on-your-own thing.
I folded the check in half, tucked it in my purse, and slapped on a smile that made me feel like a fraud. “Thanks.”
As I drove home, I was acutely aware of the fact that there were millions of other people who needed this money way more than I did, and they’d probably think I was an ungrateful brat to turn my nose up at such an offer and have the audacity to be offended.
Maybe I could just donate it all to charity.