I saw it all again in the span of two heartbeats.
I closed my eyes and forced my thoughts somewhere else.
Back.
To twenty minutes earlier.
To when this had just been brunch.
Angela had insisted on the Sapphire Hotel. Of course she had.
“It’s where the board meets,” she’d said over the phone, voice dripping with self-satisfaction. “We’ll get a good table. Very visible. If the Art Council folks see us together, it’ll show… unity.”
I hadn’t asked why my presence mattered to her image that day. It was already unusual enough for her to invite me anywhere public that wasn’t a holiday obligation.
“Christopher has big news about his business,” she’d added. “And Amanda needs content. You can at least do that much, Emma. Show up.”
At least do that much.
I had been halfway through reviewing a pull request when she called. My cabin’s wood stove crackled quietly in the background; snow tapped softly at the windows. My dog, Pixel, snored on the rug by my feet.
I could have said no.
I almost did.
But there’s a part of you, no matter how logically you know better, that still wants your mother to want you there. That still reaches for the Christmas-card version of family, the one with the matching sweaters and shared laughter.
Besides, I told myself, I’d sold SafeMind three weeks ago. The ink was dry. The payout sitting in accounts so large they didn’t feel real yet. Maybe this brunch would be… different.
Maybe we could talk like adults.
Maybe I could come clean.
Ha.
The Sapphire had been Angela’s stomping grounds for years. She loved the terrace with its heated lamps and sweeping views of the lake. Loved that people saw her there, clinking glasses with board members and donors, air-kissing other women in cashmere coats.
When I arrived, she’d already claimed a table near the railing. Her coat was draped just so over the back of her chair, label visible. Amanda sat to her right, scrolling on her phone. Christopher was pacing, thumb flying over his screen, checking whatever markets he pretended to care about that week.
“Em,” he’d said when he saw me, flashing that salesman smile that used to get him out of trouble with teachers. “Look, she came.”
“Hi, Mom,” I’d said, leaning in to brush my cheek against Angela’s. Her skin smelled like expensive moisturizer and cold disapproval.
“You’re late,” she murmured, lips barely moving. “And what are you wearing? That hoodie looks… cheap.”
“It was a last-minute invite,” I replied evenly, taking my seat. “Didn’t realize there was a dress code.”
She pursed her lips, meaning: you should have known.
Amanda gave me a once-over that felt like a TSA scan. “You could at least dress aspirational,” she said. “You know how lighting is here.”
“She can’t afford aspirational,” Christopher joked, dropping back into his chair. “She lives in the woods, Mandy. Thrift stores and flannel is their runway.”
“Cabin,” I corrected, reaching for my water. “And flannel is warm.”
“Cabin,” Angela echoed, tasting the word like it was a cheap wine. “Honestly, Emma. You’re not a teenager at summer camp. You’re almost thirty. Don’t you ever think about… security? Stability? You could have moved back home after college like your brother and sister. Saved. Built a real life.”
A real life.
The waiter appeared then, and I clung to the interruption like a lifeline. Menus. Specials. Brunch cocktails. I ordered coffee and avocado toast without really listening. My scalp itched under my beanie—dry winter air—and I pushed it off, running a hand through my hair.
That’s when Christopher leaned across the table.
“Hey, so I’m glad you came,” he said, lowering his voice dramatically, like this was a movie and the plot was about to kick in. “I wanted to talk to you about an opportunity.”
There it was.
Not “How are you?” Not “I’m sorry I haven’t called since… ever.”
An opportunity.
“For you,” I said. “Or for me?”
He laughed like I’d made a joke. “For both of us. Win-win. You know my dealership is doing crazy numbers, right?”
I knew he leased a nine-hundred-dollar-a-month Range Rover and had posted at least three TikToks complaining about “cheap” customers who didn’t understand “luxury.” I also knew he’d borrowed money from Angela three times in the last year “for inventory.”
“Business is booming,” he went on. “But inventory is tight. Supply chain crap. I’ve got a line on some limited-edition pieces that would take us to the next level, but I need capital. Just a bridge. Fifty thousand. Short-term. I’d pay you back in six months. Eight, tops.”
He said “fifty thousand” like other people said “fifty dollars.”
Amanda started filming her mimosa, the glass catching the light. “I’ll tag the hotel,” she murmured, more to herself than anyone else. “They might repost. We should get a family pic too. Like, before the food comes, before you spill anything.” She side-eyed me as if I routinely flung omelets around public spaces.
“I don’t do bridge loans,” I said to Christopher quietly. “Especially not on brunch napkins.”
“It’s not a napkin deal, Em.” He laughed again, glancing toward Angela. “It’s family. You know mom’s already in for some; she believes in me. You just… have better credit.”
Ah.
There it was.
He had no idea that my “better credit” was the least interesting thing about my finances.
I sipped my water. Imagined, briefly, what it would feel like to say it out loud: I sold my company. I’m not your poor sister in a cabin. I could buy this hotel and turn your dealership into a parking lot, Christopher.
But that fantasy came with a montage of reactions I didn’t want to live through.
Angela, suddenly sweet as honey, gushing about how proud she was—all while drafting a mental list of things she “needed.” Christopher, calculating exactly how much he could bleed from me before I set limits. Amanda, turning me into #BossSister content while quietly resenting every follower I got from it.
They didn’t want me.
They wanted what I could give them.
“No,” I said simply. “I can’t lend you money.”
His expression flickered.
“What do you mean, you can’t?” he pressed. “You don’t have fifty grand?”
“I mean I won’t.”
The smile dropped from his face like someone had cut a string.
“You’re so selfish,” he snapped. “You know mom pays for everything for us right now while we’re building. Amanda’s got her coaching brand, I’ve got the dealership, it’s all future upside. You just sit in your little cabin coding in your pajamas. You can’t even help family?”
Angela’s fork clinked against her plate. “Christopher,” she said, loud enough for the neighboring table to hear. “Don’t pressure her. Emma’s… different. Not everyone is meant for success.”
The worst part was, she believed that.
To her, success wasn’t about building something. It was about being seen having it.
I looked at the woman who had once cried because I’d been accepted to a college out of state—because “what will people think if my daughter leaves?” I saw the teenagers she insisted into ballet and piano and cotillion, not because we liked it, but because her friends’ kids were doing them.
Angela didn’t understand my world.
Sleep-deprived hackathons, whiteboards covered in machine learning diagrams, the nauseating exhilaration of watching the first SafeMind prototype flag a piece of extremist content correctly. Years of ramen and second-hand laptops, of meeting with investors who looked at me like a curiosity before I made them very rich.
She understood handbags.
“Mom doesn’t pay for me,” I said quietly. “I pay for me. I pay for everything I have.”
“You have what?” Christopher demanded. “A truck and a shack? And you can’t even help with a loan? God, you’re pathetic.”
Amanda’s phone angled slightly toward us. Recording? Maybe. Maybe not. With Amanda, the camera might as well have been fused to her hand.
And then, because that’s how these things go, things escalated.
