“And look where it got me,” he replied coldly before turning his back on me and walking away.

Later that night, I caught him standing silently in his bedroom beside his dusty guitar case, staring at it in the dim light.

For a brief second, I thought he might open the latch and pick it up again, but instead he simply turned off the light and went to bed.

On my eighteenth birthday, Dad slid a piece of lined paper across the kitchen table while I was eating my morning breakfast.

“Pay me $250 for your room on the first day of every single month,” he said calmly.

I stopped chewing and stared at him in utter disbelief.