At 8:17 on a Thursday evening, Lauren Bennett was midway through folding laundry when her mother called to ask why the payment for Ashley’s birthday party still hadn’t gone through.
Lauren stared at her phone, convinced she must have misheard Diane. Ashley’s thirtieth birthday dinner was scheduled for the following night at The Pier House in Asbury Park. Fifty guests had been invited.
There was meant to be a private room, a seafood buffet, a custom cake, and a bar tab big enough to make Lauren’s stomach tighten just imagining it.
“Mom,” she said carefully, “I never agreed to pay for that.”
Diane let out a weary laugh, the kind that suggested she thought Lauren was being difficult on purpose. “Don’t start this now. Ashley already told everyone you were handling it.
Just use the same card as last year.”
The words hit harder than Lauren expected, because they were true. Last year she had paid. The year before that as well.
And the year before that. Every time Ashley wanted something bigger, prettier, louder, Lauren somehow got pushed into “helping,” which usually meant covering whatever her parents couldn’t—or wouldn’t—pay.
Meanwhile, for ten straight years, Lauren’s own birthdays had been treated like an afterthought. At twenty-four, her parents forgot entirely and texted two days later.
At twenty-seven, Ashley cried over a breakup during Lauren’s dinner, turning the entire night into comforting her. At thirty-one, Diane asked Lauren to babysit Ashley’s son on her birthday weekend because “you’re not doing anything special anyway.”
Lauren had stopped expecting cakes. She had stopped expecting dinners.
What she hadn’t stopped expecting, apparently, was the yearly request to fund Ashley’s celebration.
After hanging up, she checked her email. There it was: a forwarded event contract from The Pier House with Ashley’s name on it and Diane’s note above it—Use your card on file like last time so we don’t lose the room.
Lauren called the restaurant herself.
The event manager, a composed woman named Teresa, explained that no deposit had been paid yet. Ashley had asked them to hold the space until noon Friday because her sister “was taking care of it.”
Lauren sat on the edge of her bed and felt something inside her go cold and sharp.
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