“She’s just nesting,” Grandma said softly when I complained. “She wants to feel like it’s her home, too.”
At the same time, Tracy slowly started reorganizing our lives.
At first, “everyone pitched in.”
“You’re such a big help,” she’d tell me, handing me a dish towel. “It’s so important for kids to learn responsibility.”
Except “everyone” slowly turned into “just me.”
Brandon had sports. Soccer, then basketball, then baseball. He was terrible at all of them, but that didn’t stop Tracy from signing him up for private coaching that Dad paid for.
“He’s going to get a scholarship one day,” she’d say proudly while Brandon sulked on the couch playing Xbox.
Sierra was “too young” to do any chores despite being only a year younger than me. I was eleven, pulling trash to the curb and loading the dishwasher. She was ten, watching Disney Channel with a juice box.
By twelve, I was doing:
Most of the cooking.
The majority of the cleaning.
Everyone’s laundry, including Brandon’s reeking gym socks and Tracy’s “delicates” she insisted be washed by hand.
Tracy would walk around the house like a drill sergeant. After I’d vacuum, she’d run her finger along the baseboards.