Fresh paint.
Polished stone.
Empty rooms waiting to become part of my future.
My phone vibrated beside my hand.
The number was unfamiliar.
Is it true? Do you really own a house like that?
I read the message twice before realizing who had sent it.
My sister, Paige.
She was using a different number from the one I remembered, which meant she had gone looking for mine.
She had probably asked our mother.
The same woman who had once given Paige one hundred thousand dollars for her wedding and later told me I wasn't worth five thousand dollars of help.
For several seconds, I forgot about the documents sitting in front of me.
I saw Paige's wedding all over again.
The renovated barn.
The chandeliers hanging from exposed wooden beams.
The imported flowers.
The band brought in from Nashville.
I remembered sitting in the third row while my mother cried proudly beside my father.
I remembered applauding as Paige danced beneath warm string lights in a wedding dress that cost more than my first car.
Then I remembered standing in my mother's kitchen three weeks later, asking for the first financial favor of my adult life.
Five thousand dollars.
Not a gift.
My Parents Gave My Sister $100,000 but Told Me I Was Worth Nothing — So I Cut Them Out of My Life for Good
