On my thirty-second birthday, my mother, Carol, invited me to dinner at her house in Ohio.
“Nothing big,” she said. “Just family.”
That should have warned me. With my family, nothing was ever simple. I drove three hours, brought dessert from my mother’s favorite bakery, and even paid for everyone’s Italian takeout because she had “forgotten” to get cash. The house smelled like old perfume and tension, the kind of tension I had known since childhood.
Mark was already drinking when I arrived. His face was flushed, his laugh too loud, his movements loose. His kids barely looked up from their phones. Jessica, his ex-wife, gave me a tight smile and stared down at her plate.
Halfway through dinner, after my mother had spent twenty minutes complaining about her neighbors, Mark lifted his glass and laughed. It was not warm. It was sharp and ugly.
“Funny thing,” he said, slightly slurring. “The people who live off everyone else always act the most generous.”
The table went silent. I set down my fork.
“What are you talking about, Mark?” I asked.
He looked straight at me and smirked.
“You,” he said. “You’re a freeloader. A leech. You wouldn’t survive without me.”
