I felt like a routine phone call had opened a tenth circle of hell in mere seconds, and now an indestructible tie had somehow been severed. Yet I had never been so sure that I didn’t deserve to be treated like this. I was a good kid now. I was upholding my end of the bargain that—for years in high school, yes—I had reneged on. But my current success gave Papa so much to brag about. He even bragged about the money he saved by not sending me to an Ivy League school. I was far from perfect, but I was indisputably the sort of daughter that you both could finally be proud of in the Indian American
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