I stared at my phone, reading my father’s text message for the third time.
The nerve of it left me stunned. Sitting at my kitchen table in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, my hands shook as I tried to make sense of what he was asking: $2,200 for my brother’s graduation party. It didn’t sound like a request—it felt like a demand.
My name is Mariana. I’m twenty-nine years old and work as a dental hygienist at a busy clinic downtown. I’m also a single mother to my five-year-old son, Lucas, who means everything to me. His father left before he was born—and in many ways, that may have been for the best. What has been harder to deal with is the way my own family has treated us over the years.
I glanced across the room at Lucas, who was on the living-room floor stacking blocks into a tall tower. His dark curls bounced as he focused, his tongue sticking out slightly the way kids do when they’re concentrating. He had no idea what had happened just three days earlier. Or maybe he did, and he was simply better at hiding his feelings than I realized.
Three days ago was Lucas’s fifth birthday. I had sent invitations to my parents, my brother Tyler, and my younger sister Bethany six weeks earlier. I followed up with calls to confirm. I sent reminders by text. I even offered to pick them up if transportation was an issue—even though they all lived less than twenty minutes from my house.