My name is Ashley Cole. I’m 33, the oldest kid, and the one who fixes messes nobody wants to admit exist. I work as a private investigator—skip-traces, background checks, insurance scams, the occasional spouse who “isn’t working late.” I notice small things.
I listen for the pauses people hope I miss. In my family, that made me the mop. If something broke, I glued it.
If someone cried, I paid. If there was an awkward silence, I smoothed it over like it was my job. Seven years of that.
Seven years paying my sister’s tuition, rent, exam fees, scrubs, textbooks still sealed in plastic like she’d just stepped out of an ad. Seven years telling myself that when Norah became a doctor, it would all have been worth it—because that’s what you say when you’re the person everyone leans on. You tell yourself it’s not being used.
You tell yourself it’s love. I learned to live lean. Instant noodles.
Gas station coffee. Cheap boots that cracked at the seams in one winter. A car that sounded like a marching band every time it hit a pothole on I-95.
I did side cases for cash. I took jobs nobody wanted, in neighborhoods where the streetlights flickered like they were tired, and the air smelled like hot asphalt even after dark. My mother called me resourceful when she needed something and obsessive when I needed a boundary.
My father called it being strong, which in our house always meant being a wallet with a pulse. There are people who think sacrifice is a beautiful word. In my family, it was a direction.
The first time I really felt it wasn’t the kitchen scene, or the will reading, or the courthouse. It was two years into paying for Norah, sitting in my car on a stakeout behind a strip mall in Northeast Philly, watching a man in a puffer coat who was supposed to be “out of state” walk straight into a nail salon like he had nowhere else to be. The heater in my car didn’t work right.
It blew lukewarm air in short, wheezing bursts, like it was embarrassed to try. I had two granola bars in the glove compartment and a coffee that had gone cold because I couldn’t risk taking the lid off and making noise. My phone buzzed.
Norah: need the exam prep course tonight. deadline is midnight. Norah: get the good one.
not the cheap version. I remember staring at the message and feeling my jaw tighten, not because I couldn’t pay, but because she wrote it the way people speak to someone who exists for them. Like I was a button on her life she could press whenever she needed.
The story doesn’t end here –
it continues on the next page.
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