The Sister Who Took Everything
My sister kept breaking into my apartment like she owned it, and the worst part wasn’t what she touched—it was how she laughed when I asked her to stop. She read my mail, used my things, and went through my drawers—twenty-three times in six months that I could track. Every time I confronted her, she’d smile and say, “You’re overreacting.”
The first time I knew my one-bedroom in Boston wasn’t really mine, it wasn’t a stranger in the hall.
It was a lamp glowing that I knew I’d turned off, and the bathroom mirror still fogged with a sweet floral shampoo that didn’t belong to me. My name is Marin Brooks. I’m thirty-two, I ride the T to my logistics job downtown, and I used to think a deadbolt meant privacy.
Claire is five years younger and always moves like doors should open for her. She calls herself a lifestyle creator, shows up with glossy hair and a ring light, and makes people laugh so they don’t notice what she’s taking. The first time I caught her inside, she was on my rug with my laptop open and my mug in my hand, like she’d been invited.
When I asked how she got in, she shrugged. “Mom gave me the spare.”
I asked my parents to take it back. My mother sighed, “She’s family,” and my dad said, “Just keep the peace.” So I tried—until I found an important envelope slit open and resealed, my pajama drawer shoved in too far, my chipped tea mug in the sink with lipstick on the rim.
I changed the locks anyway. Two days later, I came home to Claire on my couch, twirling a key. “Mom had another copy,” she said.
“She said you’ll get over it.”
That’s when my apartment stopped feeling like a home and started feeling like a stage. I’d come back to rearranged cushions, strangers’ perfume, and the sick certainty that someone had been there—careful enough to leave almost nothing, bold enough to want me to notice. Then my mom let something slip: Claire had a new boyfriend, Jared, and she’d told him the apartment was hers.
“Don’t embarrass her,” Mom warned, like the lie was fragile glass and my truth was the hammer. A week later, Jared knocked on my door like he belonged there. Expensive coat, confident posture, eyes that slid past my face into my living room before he even said hello.
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