On my graduation day, I saw on Instagram that my family surprised my sister with a trip to Italy

“I mean…” She hesitated. “Did you?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I did.”

She let out a low whistle. “Damn, Em. That’s… big.”

“So was the balance,” I said dryly.

There was a pause. I could almost hear her weighing loyalty against honesty.

“For what it’s worth,” she said finally, “I think they had it coming.”

The words hit me harder than I expected. Until that moment, everyone involved in the situation had either been blood or strangers. Hearing someone in the gray area between—a cousin who’d spent years as my sister’s second-tier shadow at family events—say that was like having someone turn a light on in a dark room.

“You do?” I asked.

“Your mom has been using you like an ATM since we were fifteen,” Mia said bluntly. “Every time you got a job, some new emergency popped up. Meanwhile, Lily gets a new phone every time she cries about ‘content quality.’”

“It wasn’t always that bad,” I said automatically, out of reflex more than belief.

Mia snorted. “Remember when your grandma left you that savings bond because you were the only one who visited her in the nursing home, and your mom cashed it ‘for bills’ and then took Lily to that acting camp anyway?”

My throat tightened. I’d forgotten about that. Or maybe I’d filed it under “things we don’t think about if we want to function.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I remember.”

“I’m not saying I would’ve crashed her dream vacation,” Mia said. “But… I get it. And if it makes you feel better, she’s still posting as if she’s in Italy. She’s just using old Pinterest photos and pretending she’s there.”

“She’s faking it?” I asked, eyebrows lifting.

“Oh yeah,” Mia laughed. “Full-on, ‘living my best life in Rome!’ Meanwhile I saw her at the mall yesterday.”

A laugh burst out of me, sharp and unexpected.

“That’s… of course she is,” I said. “Her pride would never survive admitting her trip got canceled.”

“Well,” Mia said, “if you ever want to actually go to Italy, I hear they let people who pay for their own tickets on the plane.”

After we hung up, I stared at the crack in the ceiling for a long time.