They had their scapegoat.

Signing that form required the opposite of everything my body wanted — every instinct screamed to throw the clipboard, to say I know, to watch the smugness fall off my brother’s face.

Instead I made my hand shake on purpose and gave them the exact surrender they’d scripted, and there was a cold power in it that unsettled me even as I used it.

For ten years my family had weaponized my emotions against me — my guilt, my need to be needed, my inability to say no.