Three hours earlier, I had been sitting in a private conference room at the state lottery office outside Richmond while an attorney explained trusts, tax withholding, publicity rules, and the dangers of telling relatives too quickly.
I had almost laughed at that last part.
My family already knew how to take money from me without knowing I had any.
For six years, I had transferred $2,140 into my parents’ mortgage account every month.
I started after Dad’s commercial plumbing business collapsed when I was thirty-one.
One year became two.
Two became six.
I postponed buying a home.
I kept driving my eleven-year-old Subaru.
I worked overtime as a procurement manager for a regional hospital network while Paige bounced between jobs, relationships, and emergencies that somehow always ended with my parents opening their wallets.
Now Paige was thirty-two.
I was thirty-seven.
And apparently adulthood applied only to me.
Paige returned from downstairs and leaned against the doorframe.
Her highlighted brown hair was pulled into a loose knot. A new diamond bracelet flashed at her wrist when she folded her arms.
—Claire, don’t make this dramatic.
I looked at the bracelet.
—Is that new?
Her wrist disappeared behind her other arm.
Mom stepped between us.
—That has nothing to do with this.
I turned toward my father.
—Dad?
Robert Mercer rubbed his thumb along the seam of his jeans.
He still wouldn’t look at me.
—Your sister needs somewhere stable.
I waited.
He finally lifted his eyes.
—You can take care of yourself.
Six words.
My jaw tightened until my back teeth pressed together.
Mom nodded as though he had delivered a verdict.
—Exactly. Paige has been through enough.
Paige had broken up with her fiancé.
That was what she had been through.
I had been through a divorce at thirty-four and worked the following morning because my parents’ mortgage payment was due.
Nobody had emptied Paige’s room for me.
I walked to the closet and pulled down my suitcase.
Mom blinked.
I think she expected an argument.
Maybe tears.
Maybe another negotiation in which I eventually surrendered because surrender had been my assigned role since childhood.
Instead, I folded my clothes.
Paige shifted near the doorway.
—You’re seriously going to act like this?
I zipped the suitcase.
—Like what?
—Cold.
My hand stopped on the zipper.
I looked at her.
—Where are you living right now?
She glanced toward Mom.
—What?
—You heard me.
—With Mom and Dad.
—No. Before today.
Her lips parted.
Mom stepped forward.
—Claire, enough.
I lifted my purse from the bed.
—You were staying with Eric until Tuesday. You’ve been here for two days, and somehow that means I need to leave immediately.
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