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?”

Another pause, smaller this time, like she was deciding how much cruelty to use. “Then why are you in Naples?”

My hand tightened around my phone. “Because that’s the hotel confirmation Ethan sent me.”

“Hm.” I could picture her making that face she always made when something ugly had happened and she intended to survive it by acting bored. “Well, maybe check more carefully next time.”

“Mom, he texted me that he did it on purpose.”

Now her voice changed. It went flat and hard. “Stop faking confusion. It’s your fault for making everything into drama.”

I looked around the lobby, at the cracked tile near the front desk, at the potted palm shedding brown ribbons onto the floor, at my pale silk dress reflected in the glass door like I was some ghost who’d wandered into the wrong life.

“My fault,” I said.

“Yes,” she snapped. “Honestly, Alyssa, the attention-seeking never ends with you.”

Then she hung up.

I wish I could tell you I cried right there, dramatic and broken in the lobby of that mediocre hotel while strangers pretended not to look. But I didn’t. I did something worse.

I checked in.