Page 123 of A Dream for Daphne

“No,” Aster said. “It’s not. Nothing is with them anymore. I’m positive if I didn’t pay for them to come to the wedding, they wouldn’t. I wouldn’t have cared either way, but I don’t want Raine worried or upset that it had to do with her. And you do those things for people you love. Just like the shower gift yesterday.”

She sighed. There was no reason to say anything else.

Aster must have seen through the whole thing.

He would have played it up with Raine though.

“I’m sure they wouldn’t have come. Or they would have held out waiting for you to pay.”

“I didn’t give them the chance to do that,” Aster said. “I just told them I had the hotel booked and for them to send me their information and I’d take care of their flights. Throwing a few extra days in there for them to enjoy a vacation helped.”

She snorted. “They’ve been waiting for you to give them something like that. Mom can’t help how they are.”

“Don’t make excuses for them,” Aster said. “I know they are our parents for good or bad.”

“More bad than good,” she said, laughing.

Though it’s not like her parents didn’t send them gifts for holidays and try to do things at times when she lived there.

They didn’t do much, but they weren’t nonexistent in her life.

“True,” Aster said. “But we recognize them for who they are. They expect us to step in and make up for their shortcomings.”

“And we both do and did,” she said.

“Which is stopping now,” Aster said, giving her a hard stare. “After the wedding.”

“Good thing you amended that,” she said

“They know this is a one-shot thing with me. They should be here for a number of reasons. I believe they would have come anyway after they put the guilt on my shoulders. Don’t you think?”

She wanted to believe what Aster said was true.

Even if their motivation was to use that for something more in the future.

“I think so,” she said.

“I saved us all months of a headache and calls and whining about it,” Aster said.

“That’s a good point.”

“They haven’t said anything to you about money in months, have they?” Aster asked.

“No,” she said. “I’m sure you told them not to.”

“I did,” Aster said. “I’m not afraid to admit it either. They have no right to ask you for anything when you have been giving them money for years. They used it as an excuse to call it rent.”

“Lots of parents charge rent to their grown adults still living in the house.”

“Don’t even think of making excuses for them,” Aster said.

“I’m not,” she said. “I would have paid them something anyway, though it shouldn’t have been as much. But it made me appreciate the value of hard work and money.”

“And had us both growing up faster than we should have.”

She laughed. “I don’t think that way,” she said.

“I don’t think I do either other than you didn’t get to enjoy your life much. You were always working.”

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