When Willa’s brother leaves more than just damage behind, old family wounds rip wide open. As silence stretches and loyalties unravel, she’s forced to choose between keeping the peace and protecting her own. A quiet, powerful story about boundaries, betrayal, and the healing that begins when you finally walk away.
The first time I realized I was unwanted, I was six years old, wearing a paper crown and clutching a slice of grocery store cake. I remember the frosting was blue, even though I’d asked for pink. Nobody sang.
Nobody clapped. The adults hovered around my mother, who was in labor at the time, groaning softly in the next room. By nightfall, my brother was born.
My mother cried when she held him — real tears, the kind she’d never shed for me. “Finally, a boy, Frank,” she whispered to my father, like I’d been a placeholder all along. By the time Nick turned 10, he had three bikes — one for the street, one for the park, and one he barely touched.
He had a brand-new gaming console, the one I wasn’t even allowed to sit near. His closet was filled with clothes from the good stores at the mall. Nick didn’t get our cousin’s hand-me-downs, not like me.
His closet wasn’t full of clothes from sale racks. He had real, full-price clothes with tags that made my stomach twist. I asked Mom once why I couldn’t have a pair of shoes from one of the fancy stores, too.
She barely looked up from folding laundry. “Because you don’t need them, Willa. You’re not in the middle of a growth spurt like Nick is.
Just take care of the ones you have now,” she said simply. When I needed pads, she handed me two quarters and told me to use the machine at school. “But they’re scratchy, Mom,” I complained.
“Please can we get the soft ones from the store?”
“Willa, if they’re fine for all the other girls at school, I think you’ll be just fine, girl,” my mother muttered, spreading Nutella all over my brother’s sandwich. I knew I’d be getting peanut butter. Another time, Nick asked for deodorant, and my mother drove him to Target, making me take over the chicken and mushroom casserole instead of doing my homework.
He came home with three different kinds of deodorant and a body spray that made the hallway smell like burnt citrus for days. Our parents paid for his college in full. They bought him a secondhand Jeep when he got his license.
The story doesn’t end here — it continues on the next page.
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