The first time I saw them again after everything fell apart, it wasn’t at a family gathering or some accidental encounter that could be blamed on coincidence. It was outside my house—my new house—on a cloudy Saturday afternoon when the neighborhood was quiet enough to hear wind chimes from three yards away. Their car rolled up slowly, like it was ashamed to be recognized.
I knew it immediately, not because the car was special anymore but because my body remembered everything before my brain caught up. My stomach dropped the way it used to when I could sense a fight coming before a word was spoken. My hands went cold.
Then the car stopped across from my gate, and out stepped my sister Sloane wearing oversized sunglasses like she still had money to hide behind. Behind her, Mason climbed out slower—my ex-husband, the man who’d once promised we’d build a life together brick by brick, now moving like someone who’d learned exactly how fast those bricks can fall. They didn’t wave.
They didn’t smile. They just stood there staring at my house like they’d expected it to be smaller, like they’d expected me to be smaller. “We need to talk,” Sloane said, her voice carefully rehearsed.
Mason rubbed his palms together nervously—a gesture I knew by heart from years of marriage. He did it when he wanted something but didn’t want to admit it. I looked at them through the bars of my gate, and then I started laughing.
Not a polite laugh or a bitter one, but a real laugh—bright, shocked, almost joyful—because the absurdity hit me all at once. They’d come back like I was still the same woman they’d left behind, like consequences were negotiable, like I owed them rescue simply because we shared blood and history. They’d come back broke.
And I was the first stable thing they’d seen in months. It had started the way disasters usually start in families like mine—casually, with a joke that wasn’t really a joke, said loud enough in public that you’d look crazy if you reacted. Sloane had chosen the brunch place, some trendy café with sticky tables and weak coffee.
I’d slid into the booth across from her and immediately felt the shift in energy. Sloane had always possessed a restless hunger, like she was constantly auditioning for a better life. Even as kids, she’d wanted the newest shoes, the coolest backpack, the right friends.
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