The night I lost my job, my sister shouted, “Who’s going to pay my car loan now?” Mom backed her up. Dad started packing my things. “Your sister needs this house more than you do.” I said nothing about the company in my name or the beach house. Hours later… it all collapsed.

I stood up and walked down the hall to my bedroom. The door was open. Half my bookshelf was already bare. The framed photo of my college graduation—the only piece of my history that had been allowed on a wall in this house—was gone. There was only a small, lonely nail hole where my achievement used to hang.

Footsteps echoed behind me. My father, Ray Sinclair, walked into the room. He was a man of sixty-four years whose silence was often mistaken for peace. It wasn’t. It was an absence of courage. He carried a flat-pack cardboard box. He popped it open on my bed and started placing my folded shirts inside.

“Dad,” I said. “Dad, look at me.”

He didn’t. His hands continued their rhythmic, mechanical packing. “Your sister needs this house more than you do, Joanna. You’ll be fine. You’re always fine.”

You’re always fine.

Those four words were the foundation of my servitude. Because I was “fine,” I could be exploited. Because I was “fine,” I didn’t need a bedroom. Because I was “fine,” I could be discarded the moment the checks were in question.