"Sweetheart, go on and tell your aunt yourself. Otherwise she'll think I'm forcing you."
The pain shot up my spine. I bit down on my lower lip until I tasted copper, forcing the words through clenched teeth. "Yes. I'm willing."
As if unwillingness would have changed anything.
The first time I went out to collect recyclables, I came home filthy from head to toe. Aunt Grace looked at me with heartbreak in her eyes and turned on my mother. "Vivian, how could you send a child that young out to pick through garbage?"
"What? She wanted to toughen herself up. I'm her mother—you think I'd force her?"
It would have been better if Aunt Grace never asked at all. Every time she intervened, even with a single question, my mother took it as a challenge. And the price was always paid by me, doubled.
So I could only stand in front of my aunt and say I was willing.
Grace sank onto the sofa like a balloon with all the air punched out of it. She didn't say another word for a long time.
Even Stella and Rhys stayed silent. The living room felt like a sealed room with the oxygen slowly draining out.
I drew several deep breaths, repeating the same warning to myself over and over.