3: 3

But when I hurried inside and pushed open the door to the private room,

every last bit of warmth froze over in an instant.

Half the dishes on the table were already picked clean.

Barbecue ribs, garlic butter king prawns, crème brûlée……

Every single one of them Sharon's favorite.

Nothing there for me.

Mom, Dad, and Sharon were talking and laughing, the mood easy and warm.

No one had waited for me.

The waiting in their invitation had only ever been an offhand courtesy.

That familiar ache rose up in my chest all at once.

Countless fragments of childhood came flooding back.

Meals at home had always gone like this.

The moment dinner started, my parents would reflexively send me off to do something.

Cut the fruit, or go bring in the laundry.

By the time I finished every little errand and came back,

the dishes I liked had long been cleaned out, leaving nothing but cold scraps.

More than twenty years, and it was still the same.

I pushed the hurt back down.

Pulled out a chair and sat without a word.

Mom lifted her eyes and looked me over.

Her gaze landed on the old coat I was wearing,

and her brows knit tight in an instant.

“Why would you wear an old thing like that out?”

Something clenched hard in my chest, my nose stinging.

The one and only piece of clothing she'd ever bought me, the one I thought she'd long forgotten.

She actually remembered.

But the next second, Sharon spoke up with a light laugh,

“Sis, you've actually still got that old coat?”

“Back then I got it dirty when I tried it on, but I didn't like it anyway, so Mom had nothing else to do with it and gave it to you.”

The air went dead silent.

I sat frozen where I was.

The proof of love I'd treasured, the thing that carried me through countless nights of hurt.

Turned out, from start to finish, it was just a piece of garbage she hadn't wanted.

The fingers holding my utensils gave out all at once.

The fork hit the floor with a clatter.

Seeing it, Dad quickly stepped in to smooth things over.

He took out his phone and sent me two hundred dollars.

“A grown woman, still wearing old clothes. Take the money and go buy yourself something new one of these days.”

Two hundred dollars, tossed off like it was nothing, and he thought that would settle me.

I lowered my eyes and nodded in silence. “Okay.”

The whole dinner, no one spared a thought for how I felt.

The three of them talked and laughed.

Picking food, chatting, every dish landing in Sharon's bowl.

I sat there quietly and didn't touch a thing.

Just kept pouring myself plain water, over and over.

As if that could dilute the bitterness churning inside me.

After the meal,

Mom spoke up, as though it were nothing much,

“Joy, your sister's about to graduate, and she's got nothing to do sitting around at home.”

“Your company's big, the pay's good. Can't you pull some strings and get your sister an internship there?”

The last trace of warmth left in me was gone completely.

I heard myself say, softly,

“So after she joins the company, will she be handing over half her salary to the family too? Same as me?”

And Mom blurted it out before she could think.

“How could she do that? Sharon's been raised so delicate at home, she could never take that kind of hardship.”

The words were barely out

before she realized what she'd said, her face stiffening slightly.

She rushed to patch it over,

“The money you handed over back then, we've been saving all of it for you. It'll all be yours in the future, of course.”

I gave a small laugh. “No need to wait for the future.”

“I'm leaving soon. Just give me back the money I handed over these past three years, that's all.”

Three full years, four thousand a month.

Not a cent short, all of it wrung out of my own blood and sweat.

4: 4

At that, my mother's face went cold in an instant.

"What kind of ungrateful child are you?"

"We worked ourselves to the bone raising you, putting you through school, all that time and money spent on you!"

"You finally make something of yourself, and now you start keeping accounts against your own family?"

My father's face turned hard too, and he snapped at me.

"You ungrateful brat, we raised you for nothing!"

I lifted my eyes and looked straight at them.

"You cut off all my living expenses the year I started high school."

"My tuition, my living costs, all of it I saved a dollar at a time from summer and winter break jobs."

"For college tuition I took out student loans, and I spent every spare hour working just to get by."

"So what exactly did you two raise?"

That line pushed my mother over the edge.

Her hand shot up, and she slapped me hard across the face.

The crack of it rang through the private room.

Then she turned, eyes red, and walked out.

My father went right after her, without so much as a glance at me.

In that big private room, only Sharon and I were left.

Sharon frowned, her face full of impatience and blame.

"You went way too far, Joy."

"Mom and Dad didn't have it easy raising you. Even if they slipped up sometimes, they had their reasons. How could you talk back to them like that?"

The cold went all the way through me.

"Their reasons?"

"All three years of high school, you always had the newest brand-name sneakers, the newest designer bags."

"You went to a private college, eighty grand a year in tuition, and they didn't so much as blink."

"How is it that for you they can afford everything, spoil you at every turn, but when it comes to me, it's all reasons and hardship?"

She was the biggest winner in all that favoritism.

She enjoyed everything I paid for.

And now here she was, looking down on me, accusing me of not being grateful.

Sharon flushed red under it.

Her face went from pale to blotchy.

She gritted her teeth, then stood and stormed out too.

The room went completely quiet.

Slowly I raised my hands and took off the black coat I'd worn for seven years.

I folded it neatly and set it on the chair.

Tenderness that was never mine, longing that was never mine.

From now on, all of it returned.

I sat there a moment, then got up and left.

Messages kept popping up on my phone.

In the family group chat, my parents had sent several long voice messages in a row.

I didn't have to open them to know they were cursing me out.

I didn't tap them.

The last message came up. It was—

【You have been removed from the group chat】

Right after, a private message from my mother.

"If you can't figure out what you did wrong, then for the rest of your life, act like you don't have a mother, don't have a family!"

I suddenly remembered something from a long time ago.

Sharon was the one who'd made this family group chat.

The first thing she did was add my father, add my mother.

The only one she left out was me.

I watched the three of them chatting in there day to day, sharing their lives.

I begged, small and pathetic, for a long time before they grudgingly let me in.

I never belonged there to begin with.

Getting removed now was just going back to how it always was.

And in that moment, I finally worked up the courage I'd been saving for over twenty years.

I sent the one question I'd wanted to ask from the bottom of my heart.

"Why don't you love me? Aren't my sister and I both your daughters?"

The message went through. For a long time there was no reply.

So long that I thought she'd never answer.

Then the screen finally lit up.

A few short lines that sentenced twenty-some years of my life.

"You were born a curse come to collect a debt."

"The day I got pregnant with you, my mother died. The day I gave birth to you, my father passed too."

"You brought death on my parents, and I was still willing to raise you. I've already done more than my share."

I stared at the screen, everything in me gone to ash.

So all the unfairness I'd lived with my whole life.

It wasn't that I wasn't good enough, wasn't obedient enough.

It was only because the day I was born was unlucky.

But back then I was just a helpless newborn who understood nothing.

Why should I carry the deaths of elders I'd never met, carry a lifetime of their bias and hate?

I didn't reply with a single word.

Three days went by in a blink.

On departure day I packed my few things and headed for the airport.

Right before boarding, Sharon added me back into the family group and sent a message to smooth things over.

"Mom and Dad aren't mad anymore, they just can't bring themselves to say it."

"As long as you handle the job placement thing for me, this is all in the past, and we're still family."

I looked at the fake words and let the corner of my mouth curve up.

Family.

Something I'd never had, and never wanted again.

This time, I left that family group myself, the one that had trapped me for years.

The plane took off. I was headed for a place two thousand miles away.

From now on, Joy Shepherd loved only herself.

And lived only for herself.