Those words made me physically sick, and they changed something in me that has never changed back.

As if Chloe’s happiness were a thing that justified the destruction of mine.

As if the two were on a scale that balanced, and my sister’s joy simply weighed more than my devastation, and the decent thing for me to do was to accept my place on the lighter side of it.

I did not have words, at the time, for how deeply that reordered my understanding of my own family.

I had assumed, my whole life, that if I were ever seriously wronged, my parents would be on my side — that this was simply what parents were, a fixed point, a place you could always go.