Chapter 2 - The Cost of Being the Reliable Daughter
The four hours back to Seattle were the quietest, heaviest hours of my entire life.
With every mile marker flashing past in the rain, memories of everything I had sacrificed for my family paraded through my mind.
I was twenty-seven years old, working fifty hours a week as a freelance graphic designer and marketing coordinator.
For as long as I could remember, I had worn the invisible badge of being the reliable daughter, the fixer, the shock absorber for everyone else's disasters.
When my older brother Kyle launched an ill-fated mobile auto-detailing business three years ago and went broke within four months, I gave him three thousand dollars of my savings.
He never paid back a single cent, and when I cautiously asked about it six months later, he accused me of holding money over his head.
When my younger sister Brinn was planning her lavish country-club wedding, she wept over the phone because she could not afford the floral arrangements and high-end photographer she dreamed of.
I quietly swiped my credit card to cover five thousand dollars for her dream wedding so she wouldn't feel embarrassed in front of her in-laws.
At the reception, Brinn thanked our parents three times in her speech, but never once mentioned my name.
When the roof on our parents' house in Portland began leaking into the master bedroom during a winter storm, Dad claimed their retirement funds were locked up.
I withdrew five thousand dollars from my emergency fund and handed it over without hesitation, believing that family showed up when times were hard.
Yet when Maisie’s father, Derek, packed his bags and walked out the door the minute my pregnancy test turned positive, the family’s warmth evaporated.
My mother didn’t rush to Seattle to hold my hand, nor did Kyle offer to help me move my heavy furniture into a smaller, cheaper apartment.
Instead, my mother sat across from me at a coffee shop and said in a clipped, disapproving tone, "Well, Jenna, nobody forced you into this reckless situation."
They treated my single motherhood like a moral failure, an embarrassing stain on their pristine suburban reputation.
Maisie’s birth had been treated like a scandal rather than a miracle, an event to be tolerated with tight smiles and quiet eye rolls.
By the time I pulled into my apartment complex in north Seattle, night had fallen, and the rain was hammering against the pavement.
I carried my sleeping baby upstairs in her heavy car seat, unpacked the untouched birthday gift from the trunk, and dropped it into the bottom of my closet.
May you like
I laid Maisie gently in her crib, watching her tiny fingers curl into fists, and felt a profound, burning clarity take root inside my spirit.
The bank of Jenna was officially closed, and the daughter who begged for scraps of affection was officially dead.
