Me.
“You have no idea how much Mom and Dad have struggled,” she snapped, pointing like she could blame me into shrinking. “Amanda, you’re always like this—always talking about your own pain and suffering and never once thinking about how much everyone else has supported you.”
Her words came fast, rehearsed, like she’d been waiting years to say them. I saw it then: the way she leaned into the story they’d built, the way she wanted it to be true because it made her innocent.
“Even if you got the money,” she added, voice rising, “you’d just waste it on meds or whatever nonsense you spend money on. That’s why Mom and Dad have been managing it for you. What’s wrong with that?”
Something inside me snapped so cleanly it almost felt quiet.
I realized, in the space of a heartbeat, that Madison knew. She knew what our parents had been doing. She’d benefited from it. She’d played along, smiling, vacationing, upgrading her life while I worked double shifts and counted coins.
A sound escaped my mouth before I could stop it.
“That’s a lie.”
Every head turned.
“Liar,” I said again, louder, my voice shaking now with years I didn’t know I’d been carrying. “I never said I wanted to leave this house. It was you both. Mom. Dad. You told me to get out.”
My mother’s eyes widened for a fraction of a second—just long enough for me to see fear—then she collapsed into tears like she was on cue.
“What a terrible thing to say, Amanda,” she wailed. “We would never tell you to leave. Your illness is making your memories confused.”
My father leaned into it instantly, glaring at me like I was embarrassing him.
“That’s right,” he said. “We refuse to indulge your delusions any longer.”
Delusions.
That word hit me like a slap because it was a trick. If they could make me doubt my own memory, they could make everyone else doubt me too, and then I would be the problem again, the difficult daughter again, the unstable girl who should be handled.
I swallowed hard, forcing my voice into something steadier.
“My memories are confused?” I repeated. “No. I remember it perfectly.”
For a second, the room blurred, and I was back in that night—the cold biting through my sleeves, my hands numb, the streetlights turning everything pale and unreal. I remembered my own breath coming out like smoke, and the way my father’s voice had sounded when he said, Get out, like it was an inconvenience finally solved.
“The day I was thrown out,” I said, “I was left alone in the cold with nowhere to go. I remember exactly who saved me.”
I kept my eyes on them as if staring could hold them still.
“I ran to Paige’s house,” I said. “She took care of me for two weeks until I found an apartment. Her parents remember it too—how I showed up sobbing in the middle of winter with nothing but the clothes on my back.”
My mother’s lips parted, but no sound came out.
“They were furious,” I continued. “They said, ‘How could any parent throw out their daughter in the middle of the night?’”
My voice shook, but it didn’t break.
“If you want, I can call Paige right now and put her on speaker,” I said. “She can tell you whether I ran away for fun or whether I was thrown out.”
My father’s eyes flickered, and in that flicker I saw it—panic.
“Most of my paycheck disappeared instantly,” I said, because if I didn’t say it now, it would keep poisoning me later. “Rent. Living expenses. Treatment for my chronic illness. Medication. I didn’t have a single cent left.”
I could smell the diner again as I spoke—old grease and burnt coffee clinging to my hair, my shoes sticking slightly to the floor behind the counter, my body heavy with exhaustion at 5 a.m. I remembered counting tip money in the bathroom with my hands shaking, telling myself I just needed to make it one more week, one more month.
“When I was desperate,” I said, “I worked overnight shifts at a 24-hour diner after my day job just to survive.”
I felt my hands trembling and pressed them flat on my thighs, grounding myself in the present.
“And while I was doing that,” I said, “what were you doing?”
I looked around the house again, seeing it now with a clarity that made me feel sick. The shine of the counters. The new refrigerator. The way my mother’s eyes kept darting like she was searching for a story to save herself.
“I walked in today and I barely recognized it,” I said. “The kitchen is remodeled. There’s a brand-new refrigerator. And outside there’s a shiny new SUV.”
My father’s jaw tightened. My mother’s shoulders hunched as if she could make herself smaller.
“When I begged for help,” I said, “you told me you had no money. So where did the money for all this come from?”
My parents exchanged glances, their mouths moving as if they could find a story that would save them. Nothing came.
Then I turned toward Madison, because the anger in me had finally found its shape.
“And last summer,” I said, “the three of you took a trip to Hawaii to celebrate Madison’s high school graduation, didn’t you? I saw it on your Instagram. You were laughing on the beach like you didn’t have a care in the world.”
Madison’s face flushed red.
