He Missed the Race, the Ribbon, the Science Olympiad, and Every Birthday, Then Tried to Buy It All Back With a Laptop Left on the Porch — My Son Carried It Back Outside Still Sealed and Said an Expensive Gift Doesn’t Return a Childhood

Chapter 14 — The Grand Gestures

Then came the flood, the way it always comes from men who ignored the small daily thing and now reach for the enormous public one.

Watching it, I saw that Marcus’s apologies had the same defect as his fathering, and that he could not see it even now.

Every gesture was grand, public, expensive, and about him: the dramatic bouquet, the top-of-the-line laptop, the surprise dinners meant to be witnessed and credited.

Not one of them was small, private, humble, or built around what Ethan or I actually needed, because Marcus did not know how to do anything that would not also make him look good in the doing of it.