Chapter 2

"What's the rush?" Heinz frowned impatiently as if being bugged by insects. "Besides, you can't possibly spend all that money by yourself."

"You can't possibly… spend all that money… by yourself…" These words were very jarring to my ears.

I stared hard at him.

I have been looking at this face for 27 years. Since childhood, he had gotten chicken drumsticks and new schoolbags, as well as expensive birthday gifts. He never thought there was anything wrong with that.

In this family, the benefits only went to him.

I turned to my mom. "Is this your intention too, Mom?"

My mom came out of the kitchen and wiped her hands on her apron. She didn't answer my question directly.

Instead, she said, "Natty, stop being silly. Your brother buying a house is a big deal. Besides, there's no point in you saving all that money. If you had a boyfriend, would I still dip into your savings?"

No point? These words hurt more than seeing my 60,000-dollar account wiped clean.

At least 60,000 dollars was a quantifiable number.

But "no point" negated my entire existence.

What I saved over five years, 1,825 days and nights, wasn't just money.

It was the entire confidence I had built up and the belief that I could control my own life.

I took a deep breath. "Then consider this sum of $60,000 as my upfront payment for 27 years of raising me."

My mom was stunned.

"From now on, I owe all of you nothing. And all of you don't come looking for me anymore." I turned and left.

I heard my mom's slightly frantic voice from behind me. "Natty! What are you doing? Natty…"

After that, the door closed behind me.

The motion-sensor light in the hallway didn't come on.

I stood in the darkness, feeling my heart pounding against my chest.

Yet I was more clear-headed than I had been at any moment in the past 27 years.

My phone lit up then. It was a text message from my mom: [Why are you making such a fuss? Come home for dinner. We're having beef stew, your favorite.]

I looked at it for three seconds before closing the chat window without replying.

I stood in the hallway for ten minutes.

I didn't leave. It wasn't that I didn't want to. I wasn't able to.

The last bus had already left, and the nearest hotel was ten kilometers away in town. I had just enough money to buy a return train ticket.

My name was Natalya Saunier. I was 27 years old, and all my savings combined would barely be enough to buy a hot dog at a street stall right now.

Was that hilarious?

Indeed, it was.

When I pushed open the door again, they were already eating.

The beef stew sat right in the middle of the table. My mom was serving chicken wings to Jona. Heinz was digging into his food while Lilou was scrolling through her phone and gnawing on the thickest piece of beef.

No one raised their head when I entered.

It was as if the earlier confrontation had never happened.

"Natty, come eat," My mom didn't even look up. Her voice had returned to its usual matter-of-fact tone. "The food won't taste good once it gets cold."

I didn't sit down. "I'm going to check on my room."

"Your room…" My mom's voice faltered. "Jona has a lot of stuff, so I've stored some things there temporarily…"

But I was already at the doorway.

When I opened the door and the light came on, I thought I had walked into the wrong room.

My study desk was gone.

The solid-wood desk that had been with me throughout middle and high school, the one with the words "Keep going" carved into the surface, was gone. In its place were a folding stroller, three unopened boxes of diapers, and two dusty suitcases.

The bed was still there. But the sheets belonged to Jona, printed with the Paw Patrol characters.

The bookshelf had been emptied. My textbooks, my notebooks, and all the essay magazines I collected over three years of high school were all gone. The shelf was now crammed with Jona's early learning gadgets, educational toys, and out-of-season cotton jackets.

The stickers on the wall had been torn off too. The world map I'd put up when I was 18, with five cities I most wanted to visit circled in red, was reduced to a single, badly torn-off corner in the upper right.

I stood in the center of this room, smelling the mixture of baby formula and mothballs.

Not a single thing here was mine.

It was as if I had never even lived in this home.

"Where are my books?" I turned to my mom, who was standing in the doorway.

"You graduated years ago. What are you keeping those for? I have sold them for scrap." She said it so casually, as if she were tossing aside a bag of expired snacks. "That bookshelf would be perfect for Jona to store his toys…"

"What about my royalties?" I cut her off.

My mom stared blankly for a moment. "What royalties?"