While carrying dessert to Christmas dinner, I froze outside the dining room when I heard my mother laugh:

“Claire won’t mind moving into an apartment. Her three-hundred-and-fifty-thousand-dollar condo belongs to Megan’s family now—rent-free.”

I didn’t yell. I smiled, served the pie, and let Megan brag on Facebook for three weeks. Then I accepted a cash offer, sold the deed, and disappeared.

Seventy-nine missed calls lit up my phone the morning the moving truck arrived.

For six years, I worked sixty-hour weeks as a corporate financial analyst in downtown Denver, bringing lunch from home and skipping vacations so I could pay off my mortgage. At twenty-nine, I was the sole owner of a renovated modern two-bedroom condo in Cherry Creek worth $350,000.

My younger sister, Megan, lived a completely different life. She was married to an unemployed aspiring musician named Kyle, had two toddlers, and constantly depended on our parents, Robert and Evelyn, to rescue them from overdue credit-card bills and unpaid apartment leases.