“Oh, so we tired you out?” he snapped. “Don’t make it sound like I forced you into this. You’re just staying home. What’s even hard about your job? I make the money. You get to sit in the comfort of this house and complain about wanting a vacation.”
Your job.
That word always scraped at me like a dull knife. As if motherhood, marriage, womanhood were simple lines on a to-do list. As if the years I spent making everyone else’s life easier meant nothing. Like my work began and ended in the kitchen.
He went on. “Why don’t you be more like your sister Camille? She’s not even your sister by blood, and yet she’s miles ahead. Unmarried, independent, smart—she earned her own money and place in the world. She can travel wherever she wants and doesn’t burden anyone for it.”
Camille. The orphan they adopted when I was fifteen. The golden girl who walked into our lives and stole every single piece of love I thought I owned.
Before I could respond, my father walked in—David, stern as ever, with that gaze that had never once looked at me with pride.
“She’s right,” he said, sipping tea as if he hadn’t just walked into a storm. “Camille is the better woman. Smart. Practical. Knows what she wants.”