Chapter 1 — Dad Wants Only Family
The message came while I was stuck in traffic on Interstate 25, the afternoon sun flashing off the cars around me.
On the seat beside me sat a small gift bag with a pair of silver seashell earrings inside.
They were for my mother, for the cruise — the same cruise I had spent six months planning, and paid for entirely out of my yearly bonus, because some foolish part of me still believed one perfect family vacation might finally make me feel like I belonged.
My phone buzzed.
It was a text from my mother, and I smiled before I opened it.
A second later, the smile was gone.
You’re not coming.
Dad wants only family.
That was all.
No apology, no explanation, no phone call — just one cold sentence removing me from a trip I had funded myself.
I stared at the screen until someone honked behind me, the light having turned green without my noticing, and even as I finally eased forward I kept turning the words over. Dad wants only family. Apparently I was family when there were bills to pay.
Chapter 2 — Useful, Not Loved
My name is Imogen Kingsford.
I’m thirty-three, and for most of my life I mistook being useful for being loved.
I was always the reliable one — the daughter you called when something broke, when a number didn’t add up, when a bill came due that no one else had planned for.
I had built an entire identity out of being the person who could be counted on, and I had done it, I understand now, because being counted on was the closest thing to being wanted that my family had ever offered me.
A child learns very quickly what earns a warm look in her house.