After that night, the apartment filled with a strange silence. It wasn’t a peaceful silence, but a tense one—thick, heavy, like the air right before a storm. Marten spoke little, answered in short phrases, and avoided Elsa’s gaze. She, on the other hand, felt surprisingly steady. Not happy, not relieved—steady. As if, after a long time, she was finally standing on solid ground.
In the following days, Marten’s phone rang often. Elsa didn’t ask who was calling. She knew. Each time, his voice changed: sometimes irritated, sometimes defensive, sometimes weighed down by guilt. Sometimes he went out onto the balcony to talk; other times he left the apartment with the excuse of taking a short walk. He always came back more exhausted than when he’d left.
One night after dinner, Marten sat across from Elsa and let out a deep sigh.
“My mother is furious,” he said. “Very furious.”
Elsa nodded.
“I expected it.”
“She says you destroyed the family. That you changed the rules without consulting anyone. That you use money to control us.”
Elsa gave a faint smile.
“Funny. Until now, my money didn’t control anyone. It just solved problems.”
“Sabina said she won’t come to our house again,” Marten continued. “And Pierre… better not repeat what he said.”
“No need.”
A long silence followed. Marten toyed with the edge of his napkin.
“Elsa… what if I took out a loan? Just for my mother’s birthday. To avoid a scandal.”
She looked at him calmly.
“If you want to take out a loan, that’s your decision. But don’t expect me to pay it back. Or to rescue you when you regret it.”
“Why does everything have to be so radical?”
“Because for years it was exactly the opposite, Marten,” she replied. “Radically comfortable for everyone—except me.”
That night, Marten slept on the couch. Not because Elsa threw him out, but because he didn’t know how to lie down beside her without feeling ashamed.
Days passed. Katharina’s birthday arrived. There was no restaurant. Just a modest celebration at home, with a bakery cake and a few guests. Elsa wasn’t invited. She didn’t expect to be.
When Marten came back, he was quiet.
“It was… different,” he said after a while.
“In what way?” Elsa asked.
“They talked a lot about you. About how you’ve ‘changed.’ But you know what was the strangest part?”
Elsa looked up.
“No one offered to pay for anything. Everyone just expected that… somehow it would get handled.”
Elsa smiled slightly.
“Exactly.”
That night something broke for good. But at the same time, something new began to form.
Marten started saying no to small requests. At first awkwardly, then with increasing firmness. He stopped making promises. He stopped “assuming.” He began to see his family differently: not as helpless people, but as adults used to not taking responsibility.
One Sunday morning, coffee cup in hand, he said:
“I think for a long time I put you in an unfair position.”
Elsa watched him closely.
“You don’t think it. You know it.”
“It was comfortable,” he admitted. “Knowing you would fix everything. That I could keep being ‘the good guy.’”
“And now?” Elsa asked.
“Now it doesn’t work anymore.”
Elsa set her cup down on the table.
“Marten, I never stopped you from being generous. I only stopped you when that generosity came at my expense.”
He nodded slowly.
“If we can’t move forward in a different way… maybe we can’t move forward at all.”
It was the first moment Elsa felt real pain—not anger, but honesty. Still, she didn’t back down.
“Then we’ll figure it out,” she said softly.
Months passed. Their relationship didn’t become easier, but it became more real. Without assumptions. Without comfortable silences. Without invisible wallets.
And for the first time, Elsa stopped feeling like she had to buy her place—either in a family or in a relationship—because she had learned something fundamental:
If you have to pay to be accepted, that isn’t a family—it’s a transaction.
