“That’s exactly what they wanted,” I told Priya, and saying it out loud to someone outside the family made it sound as absurd as it was. She shook her head slowly. But it was her next question that stopped me cold. “Can I ask you something? You said your sister’s been the favorite your whole life, the ballet lessons, the car, all of it. Do you have any idea why they’d treat two daughters so differently?” I opened my mouth to give my usual answer, that Camille was just easier to love, and then I stopped, because a memory I’d buried for twenty years suddenly surfaced.<\/p>\n
I remembered being fourteen, home sick from school, and overhearing my parents arguing in the kitchen. My father’s voice, low and bitter: “She’s not even mine, and I’ve raised her like she was.” At the time, I’d assumed, in the confused way of a teenager, that he was talking about me, that somehow I was the one who didn’t belong, which had explained so much about the way they treated me. I had carried that quiet shame for two decades. But sitting there with my cold coffee, replaying the exact words, I finally understood I’d had it backwards. He hadn’t been talking about the daughter he neglected. He’d been talking about the one he spoiled. And a week later, when my father called from an unblocked number to make one final, furious demand about the house, I finally said the sentence I’d been holding my whole life.<\/p>\n
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