On Christmas morning, my parents smiled and handed my sister a key…

But favoritism doesn’t whisper. It carves. It carves itself into holidays and dinners and all the moments where love is supposed to be loudest.

That morning, watching Jenna hold a house key while I held a lifeless envelope, I stopped wondering. I knew exactly where I stood. And I knew something else, too.

This wasn’t the moment to speak. Not yet. But it was coming.

I opened the envelope with the same care you’d give a wound you already know will scar. There was only one sheet inside. No letter.

No message. Just a printout of a job listing an admin assistant role at a regional insurance office. Entry level.

Hourly. Near the bottom an ink that was unmistakably Douglas’ sharp block letters. All pressure and control he’d scrawled.

Thought this might be more your speed. I stared at the page without blinking my fingers cold. No one noticed.

Jenna was still talking about French doors and that cute reading nook. Margaret was already refilling her coffee. I let the paper fall back into the envelope, folded it twice, then slid it under my leg.

Not to hide it. Just to end it. The room was full of noise, but none of it reached me.

All I could hear was the sound of that envelope scraping against itself thin paper over thin paper like something whispering that I would never belong here the way she did. They hadn’t given me less because they forgot. They gave me less because they believed I needed less.

Because I’d always figured it out. Paid my own rent. Packed my own boxes.

Picked up the phone myself when the school nurse called. And I think that’s what stung most. Not the insult, but the absolute confidence with which they delivered it.

They weren’t being cruel. They were being consistent. I hadn’t planned on coming back.

But guilt has a way of disguising itself as duty, especially when your mother calls twice in one week, using words like your father and hurt and can’t lift boxes without help. It wasn’t the request that got me. It was the tone.

That syrupy kind of concern layered over unspoken accusation. As if refusing would mean I was cold or selfish. As if decades of quiet dismissal could be wiped clean by one favor on a Saturday.

So I said yes. I drove the four hours home, parked in the same driveway Douglas still edged with a ruler and hedge clippers, and stepped into a house that smelled exactly like it always had. Lemon polish overcooked roast and the faint hint of something burning that no one acknowledged.

Jenna wasn’t there. She’s busy, Margaret said with a sigh that somehow made it sound like her absence was my fault. I smiled, nodded, said the right things…