3: 3
But when I hurried inside and pushed open the door to the private room,
every last bit of warmth froze over in an instant.
Half the dishes on the table were already picked clean.
Barbecue ribs, garlic butter king prawns, crème brûlée……
Every single one of them Sharon's favorite.
Nothing there for me.
Mom, Dad, and Sharon were talking and laughing, the mood easy and warm.
No one had waited for me.
The waiting in their invitation had only ever been an offhand courtesy.
That familiar ache rose up in my chest all at once.
Countless fragments of childhood came flooding back.
Meals at home had always gone like this.
The moment dinner started, my parents would reflexively send me off to do something.
Cut the fruit, or go bring in the laundry.
By the time I finished every little errand and came back,
the dishes I liked had long been cleaned out, leaving nothing but cold scraps.
More than twenty years, and it was still the same.
I pushed the hurt back down.
Pulled out a chair and sat without a word.
Mom lifted her eyes and looked me over.
Her gaze landed on the old coat I was wearing,
and her brows knit tight in an instant.
“Why would you wear an old thing like that out?”
Something clenched hard in my chest, my nose stinging.
The one and only piece of clothing she'd ever bought me, the one I thought she'd long forgotten.
She actually remembered.
But the next second, Sharon spoke up with a light laugh,
“Sis, you've actually still got that old coat?”
“Back then I got it dirty when I tried it on, but I didn't like it anyway, so Mom had nothing else to do with it and gave it to you.”
The air went dead silent.
I sat frozen where I was.
The proof of love I'd treasured, the thing that carried me through countless nights of hurt.
Turned out, from start to finish, it was just a piece of garbage she hadn't wanted.
The fingers holding my utensils gave out all at once.
The fork hit the floor with a clatter.
Seeing it, Dad quickly stepped in to smooth things over.
He took out his phone and sent me two hundred dollars.
“A grown woman, still wearing old clothes. Take the money and go buy yourself something new one of these days.”
Two hundred dollars, tossed off like it was nothing, and he thought that would settle me.
I lowered my eyes and nodded in silence. “Okay.”
The whole dinner, no one spared a thought for how I felt.
The three of them talked and laughed.
Picking food, chatting, every dish landing in Sharon's bowl.
I sat there quietly and didn't touch a thing.
Just kept pouring myself plain water, over and over.
As if that could dilute the bitterness churning inside me.
After the meal,
Mom spoke up, as though it were nothing much,
“Joy, your sister's about to graduate, and she's got nothing to do sitting around at home.”
“Your company's big, the pay's good. Can't you pull some strings and get your sister an internship there?”
The last trace of warmth left in me was gone completely.
I heard myself say, softly,
“So after she joins the company, will she be handing over half her salary to the family too? Same as me?”
And Mom blurted it out before she could think.
“How could she do that? Sharon's been raised so delicate at home, she could never take that kind of hardship.”
The words were barely out
before she realized what she'd said, her face stiffening slightly.
She rushed to patch it over,
“The money you handed over back then, we've been saving all of it for you. It'll all be yours in the future, of course.”
I gave a small laugh. “No need to wait for the future.”
“I'm leaving soon. Just give me back the money I handed over these past three years, that's all.”
Three full years, four thousand a month.
Not a cent short, all of it wrung out of my own blood and sweat.
