The first thing I noticed wasn’t the missing key under the mat. It was the red SOLD sticker slapped crooked across my front window, my window bleeding through the glass like an accusation. For a second, I honestly thought I had the wrong house.
Jet lag will do that to you. Bend reality. Make it slippery.
But no. The tire marks in the driveway were mine. The porch light I’d installed flickered in the same irritated rhythm.
The potted fern my son and I picked out at Home Depot drooped in the same half–dead way right beside the steps. And then the door swung open. My sister stood there, arms folded, wearing the kind of smirk people practice in mirrors.
Blond hair freshly highlighted, nails done in some expensive neutral shade, one hip cocked like she’d been waiting for this moment all day. That was the moment, right there on my own porch, when something in me went utterly, beautifully still. And I remember thinking, this is the kind of moment people confess to detectives about.
“Wow,” she said. “You made it.”
She didn’t invite me inside. She didn’t need to.
Her presence alone carved the air into something sharp. Behind her, my parents hovered in the hallway like guilty shadows. My mother clutched a travel neck pillow and a tote bag stuffed with sunscreen.
My father’s carry-on suitcase stood upright by the door, airline tag already dangling off the handle, the bright Hawaiian flowers on it almost obscene. Suitcases already packed for their Hawaii trip. No one spoke.
Not a greeting. Not a “How was your flight?” Not a question about the twelve-hour haul from Seoul to Seattle, the two weeks of relentless meetings that had finally ended with me closing a two-million-dollar contract for my company. Just silence.
Tight. Deliberate. My mother avoided my eyes, pretending to fiddle with the zipper on her purse.
My father checked his watch like he was late to his own alibi. Even then, before the words came, I knew something had rotted beneath the floorboards of our family. I shifted the strap of my bag higher on my shoulder and forced my voice to stay level.
“Why is there a sold sticker on my window?”
My sister’s smile widened. “Because we sold your house, Rachel.”
I actually laughed. It came out sharp and thin.
“Funny.”
“I’m not joking,” she said. My mother flinched at my name in my sister’s mouth. My father cleared his throat, but he didn’t step forward.
The story doesn’t end here –
it continues on the next page.
TAP → NEXT PAGE → 👇
