The box hit aluminum and paper with a soft, wet collapse that I still hear sometimes when my mind is unguarded.
“You’re cursed,” she said. “Everything you touch falls apart. Look at your brother. That’s success. Not this.”
Jace leaned against the doorway with a champagne flute in his hand and his face already arranged into the expression he wore whenever other people’s humiliation was about to become entertainment.
“Kairen was always meant to be invisible,” he said. “Someone has to clean up so real people can shine.”
A few people laughed.
Not all. Some looked down. One woman in pearls near the bar actually flinched. But enough laughed.
That was the sound that broke something.
Not because the line was original.
Because it wasn’t.
It was just the same family truth finally spoken aloud in front of witnesses.
My father looked around, saw the tension, and made the only move men like him know when shame enters a room they intended to control.
He escalated.
“Pack your things,” he said coldly. “I’m tired of neighbors thinking that rust bucket outside belongs to my son. Get out. Tonight.”
Three years.
Three years of paying rent for mold.