At Thanksgiving dinner, my father sneered across the table. “You can’t even afford a mobile home.”
While my mother served him a second helping of turkey, his words hung in the air as my brother Brandon smirked into his wine glass. Dad continued, gesturing with his fork.
“Thirty-three years old, still renting some apartment in Seattle doing what? Playing with computers?”
The extended family — aunts, uncles, cousins — shifted uncomfortably in their seats, but no one defended me. They never did.
I took a slow sip of water, set down the glass precisely, and watched condensation pool around its base on my mother’s expensive tablecloth. My phone vibrated for the seventh time in my blazer pocket. I ignored it.
The notifications could wait. They’d been waiting for months anyway. “I manage,” I said simply, cutting into my dry turkey breast.
My mother had never learned to cook it properly, always leaving it in too long because Dad liked his well done. “Managing isn’t thriving,” my father declared, warming to his topic the way he always did when he had an audience. “Your brother here just closed a major deal at Redstone.
Saved the company half a million in operating costs.”
Brandon straightened in his chair, preening like a peacock. At thirty-five, he still lived for Dad’s approval. Still worked at the same manufacturing company where our father had spent three decades climbing to VP of operations.
“That’s real achievement, Maya. Not whatever it is you do with that tech support job.”
I smiled. Actually smiled.
Because tech support was precisely what they believed I did. Some nebulous IT help desk position that barely paid my bills. I’d let them believe it for years.
Let them assume the worst every time I dodged questions about my work. “Technology changes fast,” I said mildly. “Nothing’s ever really stable in my field.”
“Exactly,” Dad pounced, as if I’d proven his point.
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