Chapter 1

My wife and daughter told me the tablet at home could take you back to ancient times.

Back in those ancient times, they had another family.

For the holiday dinner, I spent four hours cooking a whole table of food.

But my daughter just grabbed my wife's hand and stepped into the screen.

"My dad in the old days is an emperor. He eats nothing but the finest delicacies. I'm not eating your cheap junk."

I broke a bone in a car accident, and neither my wife nor my daughter came to stay with me. Instead, they complained that I was bothering them.

"You're a commoner. A little scratch is nothing worth fussing over."

"The Emperor Daddy's birthday is a great celebration for the whole kingdom. We have to be there."

Then I discovered every bank card in the house had a balance of zero, and I couldn't cover the hospital bill.

My wife and daughter sent me a video.

"The Emperor Daddy is a person of noble rank. Of course we have to buy him the very best gift."

"It's a tiny bit of money. What would a delivery driver like you know about it?"

I said nothing.

On the way home from the hospital, passing the hardware store, I bought a twenty-pound sledgehammer.

1.

I had just gotten home when my wife, Rose Delgado, came back through the tablet with our daughter.

The moment she saw me, Rose frowned.

"You knew Toni and I were coming back at this time. Why didn't you turn on the air conditioning ahead of us?"

She turned and saw the leftovers on the table, and a flicker of irritation crossed her face.

"Every single day it's these scraps. Just looking at them turns my stomach."

"A little scratch, and you're too precious to even cook a meal?"

I didn't answer. I walked straight into the bedroom.

I picked up the sledgehammer I'd just bought, hefted it in my hand, and set it carefully on the top shelf of the closet.

My daughter stood beside Rose, tilted her head up at me, and rolled her eyes.

"Mom, why waste your breath on him?"

"All this man ever talks about is saving money. Running the AC a little longer is like you're killing him."

"Even at dinner he nags. Either the food cost too much or the electric bill's too high. He drives me insane."

I came out of the bedroom, and something in my chest went cold.

"The mortgage, the car payment, your tuition. Without me pinching every penny, do you think this family could keep going?"

She clapped her hands over her ears in annoyance and ducked behind Rose.

"Are you ever going to stop? Every day this sob story, like you're the hardest-working person in the whole world."

"The Emperor Daddy is so much better. Handsome and noble, and he never bothers with me."

She wrapped her arms around Rose's waist and put on her sweet voice.

"Mommy, don't you like the Emperor Daddy better too?"

Rose didn't say anything, but the silent approval on her face said it all.

The old me would have flipped the table and fought it out until everything was said.

But this time, I only looked at her calmly.

"Rose. So you think it's a sob story too."

"You think I nickel-and-dime everything, that I've shortchanged you both. Is that it?"

Rose didn't answer. She took our daughter by the hand and started toward the tablet.

As she passed me, her steps paused.

Her tone was as flat as plain water.

"Take a look at yourself in the mirror. You're always in that same delivery uniform."

"The second you open your mouth it's how hard it is to make money. It's not just her. You and I don't have anything in common either."

Our daughter urged her on, unable to wait.

"The Emperor Daddy is waiting for us."

"If only we could stay in the old days forever. I really don't want to look at this loser."

And with that, the two of them stepped through the tablet together.

I stood in front of the mirror, and my heart felt like it had been stabbed.

The middle-aged man in the glass looked worn and shabby, with forty-dollar sneakers on his feet, split at the seams, that he couldn't bring himself to throw out.

But before I got married, I was always clean and neat too, and I never had to think twice about buying anything.

When had it all started to change?

It was Rose proposing to me over the phone, crying as she said, "Clint, I want to build a home with you."

So I scrimped and saved, wearing the same clothes for years, never willing to toss them.

Seven hard years. I gave up a respectable job back home and put a down payment on a place in her city.

It was my daughter, after she started school, throwing herself into my arms in tears, saying all her classmates took dance lessons and she wanted to go too.

So I counted every dollar, split each one in half.

And paid for her ballet classes at five hundred a session.

Now the ragged, beaten-down middle-aged man in the mirror.

He's a husband. He's a father.

The only thing he's no longer is the free man Clint Mason used to be.

I picked up the tablet.

On the screen, Rose and my daughter walked into a magnificent palace.

My daughter threw her arms around the man in the dragon robe on the throne and called him Daddy in that sweet voice.

Rose embraced him, tender and full of feeling.

The three of them, one happy little family.

And I had become the one extra person, watching from outside.