comes first.”
For ten years, “family” had meant me paying their mortgage, my sister Jenna’s car lease, graduate-school debt, vacations, emergency repairs, and the “temporary” credit cards that somehow never got paid down.
When Dad lost his business, I covered the house.
When Jenna married, I paid for the venue.
When Mom wanted a kitchen renovation, she called it “protecting the value of the family property.”
I was thirty-four and still renting a modest apartment because I had sent nearly half my income home for a decade.
Every raise I
