The next morning came with eleven missed calls and a voicemail that made me set my coffee down. My mother’s voice was shaking. “Nadia, please, you have to call the venue. They’re saying Derek’s wedding is being canceled, the whole package, everything. Please fix this.” I stood in my kitchen, Lily still asleep down the hall, and felt something quiet and steady settle over me. The venue had not made a mistake. I had spent three years as their lead catering manager, and Derek’s entire event, the discounted hall, the catering, the cake, the vendor rates, had been built on my employee pricing and my personal referrals. The night before, after I strapped my crying daughter into her car seat, I had simply withdrawn all of it.

My mother kept talking, faster now, saying Sabrina was in tears, that the deposits would triple, that the family would be humiliated. Then she asked the question she thought would move me. “How could you do this to your own brother?” I looked toward the hallway where my six-year-old was sleeping off the worst birthday of her short life. And I said the only honest thing I had left. “Honestly, Mom, I don’t care.” She started to raise her voice, the same voice that had spent thirty years asking me to shrink so Derek could shine. I did not shrink this time. I hung up.