I thought our family would stay like that forever, warm and whole.
Then, ten years ago, my father fell from a construction site. And just like that, he was gone.
My mother remarried, taking Nick and me along with her to George’s home.
The love that had once belonged to me disappeared completely.
I stopped talking as much. My father’s death and my mother’s sudden remarriage left me withdrawn. I was no longer the lively child I once was. But no one tried to comfort me. No one reached out a hand to pull me from the sadness.
Instead, there was Carrie.
She played the perfect daughter, all sweetness and smiles when my mother and Nick were around. The moment their backs were turned, she would taunt me with my father’s tragic death, pushing me until I snapped. And when I did, she would cry out, acting
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Chapter 5
pitiful, begging them not to be mad at me.
+15 Bonus
“Grace didn’t mean it,” she would say with a trembling voice. “She’s just in a bad mood and taking it out on me. It’s okay, I don’t
mind.”
And my mother and Nick would believe her. Every single time.
No matter how much I tried to explain, they never listened. They called me petty, ungrateful, and selfish. Sometimes, they said even worse things.
I would watch them–my mother, my brother, my stepfather, and Carrie–sitting together in the living room, laughing like a perfect family. And every time, I felt like a stray dog pressing its nose against the glass, looking in from the outside.
I often wondered-
If my father had taken me with him when he left this world, wouldn’t that have been better?
Carrie loved taking things from me.
The day we moved into George’s house, I was holding my favorite stuffed bear, the birthday gift my father had given me. It was the last thing I had left of him.
The moment I stepped inside, Carrie put on her sweetest face and chirped, “Grace, your bear is so cute! Can I play with it for a little while?”
I tightened my arms around the bear,
My mother knew what that bear meant to me. Nick knew, too. They had never tried to take it from me.
But now, without hesitation, my mother pried it from my arms and handed it to Carrie.
“If you like it, you can have it,” she said gently. “Grace is too old to be playing with toys anyway.”
Then she turned to me, her face hardening. “Grace, be sensible. From now on, Carrie is your little sister. You have to let her have your things.”
I looked at my mother, my throat tight with frustration.
I was older than Carrie by just one hour.
And yet, from the moment we moved in, I was expected to be the bigger person, the more mature one. To always give in, to always let her have what she wanted.
Everything I liked–if Carrie so much as glanced at it twice–was hers.
