Travis once described my daughter as a sad chapter during a family barbecue while his son Dylan started calling me the aunt who used to be a mom. The first time I heard that phrase I felt a chill run through my body and when I confronted my brother he shrugged and said Dylan was simply testing boundaries.
When I told my mother about it she dismissed the comment with a smile and said, “Oh sweetheart, he does not mean anything by it because he is just a kid.”
It was strange how that phrase always appeared whenever the person hurting me happened to be Dylan.
Two days before my mother’s birthday she called me in an unusually warm tone that always meant she wanted something from me.
“I would really love it if you came this year, Allison,” she said softly, “Dylan keeps asking if you are going to be there.”
That sentence alone should have warned me because Dylan never asked about me unless he was planning some kind of performance. The last time he had been friendly he tried to persuade me to buy him an expensive gaming chair and praised my cooking and my shop before later telling one of his friends that I had failed at being a mother.