In our family, Sunday dinner was not optional. It was a ritual. A performance. A way to keep the illusion polished.
My parents lived in a tidy house in a quiet neighborhood, the kind of place where the grass was always cut and the curtains always matched. My mother collected throw pillows. My father collected silence. Cass collected attention.
And I—well, I collected receipts. I collected bank statements. I collected the truth, even when it sat heavy and ugly.
I typed back: Sure. I’ll be there.
Then I sat in my car for a long minute and let myself remember, clearly, how we got here.
Cass had been loud since birth. My mother loved to tell the story of how Cass came into the world with her fists already swinging, screaming like she had opinions about the lighting. As a kid, Cass was the one who sang at the top of her lungs in grocery store aisles. She laughed like a firecracker. Teachers called her “a natural leader.” My parents called her “special.”
I was the quiet one. The one who read books in corners. The one who got straight A’s and didn’t make trouble. The one who learned early that being easy was the fastest way to get love.