It was that my sister could not bear to be in the presence of a sixteen-year-old who had achieved the self-acceptance that Gwen, at forty, with all her advantages, had never once known.

Cruelty, I have learned, so often works this way: it is envy wearing the mask of judgment, the misery of the hollow lashing out at the fullness of the whole.

Chapter 9 — Give Me That Camera

Gwen lunged.

She scrambled halfway across the table toward the camera, knocking over her glass of red wine, and a dark stain bloomed across my white tablecloth like spilled ink.

“Give me that camera, you little brat!” she shrieked, and her voice cracked with something I had never heard in it before, pure, undisguised panic.