When I asked to attend art camp the summer before my junior year of high school—a modest program in Santa Fe that cost less than one semester of Marcus’s boarding school or a handful of Olivia’s horse expenses—I was told that “money doesn’t grow on trees.”
My father gave the line first, looking over the top of the paper at breakfast.
My mother followed with the moral framework.
“You need to learn the value of hard work, Victoria. Not everything should just be handed to you because you want it.”
The sentence stayed with me for years.
Not because it was unusual. Because it was ordinary.
That was the trick of my family’s inequality. It was always attached to a principle. There was always a story. A moral. A reason that made the unfairness sound educational instead of personal.
Marcus needed support because he was building a future.
Olivia needed support because she was still young.
And I needed restraint because I was supposed to learn character.
So I got a job.