Chapter 2
My sister, Brenna, hugged me tightly in the driveway. Her husband, Colter, shook my hand and said, “You’re saving us, man.” Their son, Maddox, barely looked up from his phone.
For the first few days, they acted grateful. Brenna cooked dinner twice. Colter carried a broken bookshelf to the curb. Maddox asked before using the television.
On the fifth morning, Brenna left a note beside the coffee maker. We’re out of milk, eggs, cereal, bread, ham, cheese, orange juice, coffee creamer, laundry detergent, and paper towels. Thanks! I bought everything after work. That was how it began. Not with a demand. With a list and a cheerful exclamation mark.
At the end of the first month, I asked Colter how the job search was going. He was stretched across my sofa watching a football game with one hand inside a bag of chips. “A few places are interested,” he said. “Nothing worth jumping at yet.” Brenna looked up from her tablet. “He shouldn’t take the first terrible job he’s offered. We’re trying to rebuild properly.” I glanced at the grocery receipt still folded inside my wallet. One hundred and eighty-seven dollars. “That makes sense,” I said.
Six weeks passed. Then eight. Then twelve. Nobody mentioned moving.
The upstairs bathroom light stayed on all night because Maddox said he disliked walking through a dark hallway. Colter ran the air conditioner at sixty-seven degrees even when nobody was home. Brenna began using my credit card for household purchases after I gave it to her once to pick up medicine. The first unauthorized charge was thirty-eight dollars for takeout. When I asked about it, she laughed. “You would have eaten some if you’d come home earlier.”
The second was eighty-six dollars from a grocery store. The bags contained energy drinks, imported cookies, expensive steak, and a skin-care set I found in her bathroom. “It was all mixed together,” she said. “I didn’t have time to separate it.”
By the fourth month, my house no longer felt like mine. There were shoes across the hallway. Wet towels remained on the bathroom floor. The kitchen sink was always full. Colter had moved my reading chair into the garage to make space for his gaming console. Maddox took over the small room I had used as a study. My desk became a place for empty soda cans and tangled charging cables.
Whenever I tried to set a rule, Brenna reacted as if I had insulted her. “Can everyone please rinse their own dishes?” “We’re not employees, Emmett.” “Could you keep the noise down after midnight?” “Maddox is a teenager. Teenagers make noise.” “Colter, did you use my card to pay your car insurance?” “I was going to tell you.” “Could you tell me before spending six hundred dollars?” He looked offended. “Why do you always make money sound more important than family?”
That sentence worked on me for months. Money was not more important than family. Privacy was not more important than family. Sleep was not more important than family. My furniture, my food, my car, and my time were never supposed to matter more than family. Somehow, family always meant that I gave and they decided when it was enough.
May you like
I began keeping a list in the Notes app on my phone. I did not intend to use it against them. At first, I only wanted to understand why my bank account kept shrinking. Rent: $0. Electricity increase: $143 per month. Water increase: $68 per month. Internet upgrade requested by Maddox: $49 per month. Groceries: approximately $260 per week. Colter’s car insurance: $612. Replacement television after Colter threw a controller: $789. New washing machine after Brenna overloaded mine with two heavy blankets: $1,048.
I stopped adding numbers when the total reached $6,700. Looking at it made me feel ashamed. Not of them. Of myself. I had opened the door because I loved my sister. Now I was afraid to close it because I knew she would call me cruel.
