My sister and her family thought it was for them. They used a key my mother stole to move in while I was out. When I came home and found them rearranging my furniture, I didn’t say a word.
I just picked up my phone. She screamed when she saw what I did next. Am I in the wrong for calling the police when my sister’s family broke into my new house with a stolen spare key?
I’m Kate, I’m twenty-seven, and I feel like I’ve spent the majority of my life in the long, eclipsing shadow of my older sister, Anna. At thirty, she has always been the family’s golden child, the sun around which all other planets in our little solar system were forced to orbit. She was the smart one, the social one, the one capable of charming her way out of any situation with a dazzling smile and a toss of her perfectly highlighted hair.
Meanwhile, I’ve been cast in the role of “the irresponsible one,” a label which, in my family’s unique dictionary, simply refers to the one who does all the work but receives none of the credit. Growing up, Anna always had the best of everything, a fact that was presented as the natural order of things. Her birthdays were large, sprawling garden festivities, complete with rented bounce castles that sagged in the Texas heat and patient ponies that plodded in circles with squealing children on their backs.
Mine were pizza parties in the dining room, featuring a sheet cake from the grocery store bakery with my name misspelled in waxy frosting. When Anna got the three-story Barbie Dream House for Christmas, a universe of pink plastic perfection, I received a secondhand counterfeit with a missing elevator and a distinct crack in the roof. My parents would simply remark, “You don’t need all that fancy stuff, Kate,” or the classic, “Be grateful for what you have.” Anna’s gratitude, however, was never a required part of the equation.
What happened next changed everything… FULL STORY on the next page.
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