Her obsession with one-upping Aunt Grace had reached the point where my life or death simply didn't factor in.
Something tore open in my chest, and cold wind poured through the gap.
As if she hadn't driven enough knives into my heart over the years.
When Aunt Grace enrolled Stella in art classes and horseback riding lessons, my mother immediately dumped every household chore on me. "What's the point of all that nonsense? Better you stay home and help me."
When Stella sneezed, Aunt Grace rushed her to the hospital for a full checkup. When my appendix nearly ruptured and I was writhing on the floor in agony, my mother stood over me and scolded, "Don't be like your cousin—running to the hospital over nothing."
Aunt Grace sent Stella abroad early to polish her credentials, despite Stella's grades being abysmal. When I got accepted to a top university, my mother blocked me from going. "Degrees are worthless these days. You'd be better off working a factory line."
If it weren't for the school principal and my teachers showing up one after another to talk sense into her, I'd have dropped out long ago.
So no—her reaching this level of cruelty didn't surprise me. Not one bit.
I was tired. Numb. Done fighting.
I turned and walked into my room.
She followed me to the doorway.
"Sweetheart, I'm doing this for your own good."
"Why would a girl like you want to kill herself working at some big company? Better to find an honest man and settle into a real life."
"Your cousin snagged a rich boy—sure, looks glamorous on the surface. But playboys get bored. Sooner or later, he'll toss her aside."
She said this with an easy smile. Perfectly at peace.
And me? I felt like a fishbone had lodged in my throat.
Couldn't cough it up. Couldn't swallow it down.
She was the only family I had in this world.
And every single time, she'd push me to the edge of a cliff—then press her hand to her heart and say those words, I'm doing this for your own good, as if that made black white and wrong right.
As if I were the ungrateful one—the daughter too foolish to see her mother's good intentions.
I said nothing and shut the bedroom door.
The thought gnawed at me all night, shredding any hope of real sleep. My mother's face flickered behind my eyelids, then my aunt's, both blurred and shifting like figures in a fever dream.
The next morning, my mother's voice dragged me out of a fitful doze.