I was seventeen the year my little brother made me a prom dress out of our late mother’s jeans, and by the end of that night, the whole school knew exactly what kind of woman my stepmother was.
My brother Noah was fifteen. He had always been quiet in the way people mistake for softness, but there was steel in him when it mattered.
Our mom died when I was twelve. Dad remarried Carla two years later, and when he died of a heart attack last year, the house changed faster than grief could settle. Carla took over everything at once—the bills, the mail, the bank accounts, the locks on the filing cabinet, the tone of every room.