It did not occur to me, placing that order, that you cannot buy the answer to do they love me, and that the very fact I was trying to purchase it was itself the answer, printed in a language I had spent thirty-three years refusing to read.
And then my mother told me I wasn’t invited.
Chapter 5 — A Receipt
I called her.
She let it ring out.
I called my father, and he did the same.
I texted Brynn, and watched the little indicator show she had read it and said nothing.
Then I noticed I had been removed from the family group chat — not left, removed, which is a different and more deliberate act.
And that night my cousin Noelle, the only one of them who had ever treated me like a relative rather than a resource, sent me a screenshot that explained the silence.
They had made a new chat without me.