After I paid $77,000 for my brother’s wedding, he sent me to the wrong city in Italy “as a joke.” I landed in Naples while they were celebrating in Florence. The next morning, he texted: “LOL, I just didn’t want you there.” My mother added, “This is your fault.” I didn’t argue. I smiled… and sent her a gift—four feet tall, delivered by courier. She called me in tears: “Can I please pay you back?”

Not elegantly. Not like someone delivering a witness statement. More like a person emptying her pockets of something she hadn’t wanted to carry. She told me she’d heard my mother at the rehearsal dinner explaining my absence to Camille’s side of the family with a smile tight as a seam. She told me Ethan had laughed when one of his college friends asked whether I’d “bailed again.” She told me that during hair and makeup the morning of the wedding, Camille had gone quiet after checking her phone and asked twice whether anyone had spoken to me directly.

“She showed Ethan something on her screen,” Lena said. “I couldn’t see what. But he grabbed her wrist and took the phone. Not hard enough to leave a mark or anything. Just… controlling.”

The word landed with a sound in my body, like a lock engaging.

“Did anyone try to call me?” I asked.

“I don’t know. Camille disappeared for about twenty minutes before the ceremony. When she came back, her mascara had been redone.”

I looked down at my own hands. My nails were bitten ragged from Naples. I hadn’t even noticed.

“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”