“Oh my, my grandson is here!” she exclaimed, her voice trembling with joy. “You must be starving. Come in, come in! I’ll make you your favorite scrambled eggs!”
Seeing the genuine happiness on their faces, a warmth spread through my chest and my nose stung with the urge to cry.
As they kept piling food onto my plate, Grandpa and Grandma asked gently, their eyes full of curiosity about the real reason behind my homecoming.
I told them everything—exactly as it happened, without adding or leaving anything out.
Grandma’s eyes reddened immediately.
“You poor thing…”she said, clutching my hand tightly. “You dad has lost his mind!”
Grandpa had been silent the whole time; but his expression grew darker and darker, the veins on the back of his hands bulging beneath his thin skin.
When I mentioned the words my father had said—“If he can’t make something of himself, I won’t acknowledge him as my son”—Grandpa slammed his hand on the table with a loud bang.
“That brat!”
He shot up from his chair, chest heaving with anger.
“I see he’s grown some backbone now! How dare he treat you like that? This cannot go on…” He pulled out his old phone and dialed my father’s number.
The moment the call connected, he roared into the receiver.
“Wayne Thompson Crowe! You get your ass back here right now! I don’t care if you’re in the middle of meeting, you dropped it and drive here this instant!”
Whatever my father tried to say on the other end, Grandpa didn’t give him the chance—he hung up straight away.
A few hours later, my father’s Maybach pulled up in front of Grandpa’s house.
He stepped out, frowning, clearly impatient.
“Dad, I’ve got things to handle at the company. What’s so urgent? What’s this about?”
When his eyes landed on me sitting beside my grandparents, his expression shifted—first irritation, then realization.
“What’s this about?” Grandpa repeated; fought to keep his anger in check. “How could you treat your own son like that?
“He just graduated from college and you kicked him out with two hundred bucks? Are you out of your mind?”
A flicker of guilt crossed my father’s face, but he quickly straightened his back and spoke self-righteously.
“Dad, I did this for his own good! It’s called adversity education—the most popular teaching method abroad! He’s twenty-two, an adult. You expect him to just keep sponging off me? In other countries, kids move out at eighteen. I’m already being generous!”