My sister announced in the family group chat that I was officially banned from the reunion and she made it clear no one was to tell me where it would be. I didn’t argue. I didn’t reply. I simply opened the location pin… and laughed so hard I had to cover my mouth.

To understand why I am sitting in a hot car watching my family trespass in my home, you have to understand my role in the Rossi family. I am, according to their mythology, the unremarkable and difficult one.

I am thirty-four years old and I work in high-level cybersecurity for a firm called Meridian Data Group. When strangers ask what I do, I usually tell them I work in database management because it sounds boring enough to end any further questions.

If I told them the truth—that I spend my nights hunting for vulnerabilities in global financial systems—they might look at me with a sense of fear or respect. In my family, however, there has only ever been room for one kind of power, and it was never mine to hold.

Our family system is very simple if you stop expecting things to be fair. My mother, Deanna, is the center of the universe who decides the emotional weather for everyone else. If she is happy, we are allowed to breathe, but if she feels slighted, the entire world must stop to fix her mood.