Paige touched the diamond bracelet on her wrist. Mom loved reminding everyone that she’d “helped” Paige buy it. Lauren tilted her head and whispered, loud enough for everyone to hear, “Don’t cry, Emma. You’ll ruin the cheap mascara.”
I looked at myself in the mirror.
Twenty-nine years old. My face calm. My lips steady.
But to them, I was still the unwanted third daughter. The one who got the attic bedroom while my sisters got the big rooms on the second floor. The one who got a sheet cake at the grocery store on her birthday while they got trips to Paris.
My dad was leaning against the doorframe in his gray tuxedo. He was smiling like this was a show he’d bought tickets for.
“Your mother has a right to her feelings,” he said. “You’ve always been difficult.”
Difficult.
Being difficult meant asking, at eighteen, where my college fund had gone.
