My sister blasted “INFERTILE, DIVORCED, FAILURE” across a 10-foot screen at her wedding while 200 guests laughed—my mother sipped wine, my father called it “just a joke.”

I set the phone down on my desk. My hands aren’t shaking. My heart rate is normal.

There was a time when a phone call from Harold Lindon would have sent me spiraling for days, replaying every word, wondering if I’d been too harsh, too ungrateful, too much.

That time is over.

I go back to my blueprints.

Two weeks after Harold’s call, a Sunday morning. I’m making coffee when my phone lights up with Paige’s name.

I let it ring three times before I answer. Old habit. Bracing.

But the voice on the other end doesn’t sound like Paige. Not the Paige I know. The one who wiggles her fingers and puts infertile on a screen.

This voice is flat, tired, stripped of performance.

“Garrett moved out. Mom won’t stop crying. Dad won’t talk to anyone.”

I sit down at my kitchen table. I don’t interrupt.

“The slideshow was wrong. I know that. I… I don’t know why I did it.”

She stops. Starts again.

“I’ve been doing things like that my whole life, and nobody ever told me to stop.”

“Because they were too busy doing it to me.”

A shaky exhale.

“Yeah.”

Silence.

“I don’t know who I am without being the favorite,” she says.

And it’s the most honest thing my sister has ever spoken.