Once, this place had smelled like cinnamon and old books. Now, the air was heavy with fake lavender diffusers my stepmother, Victoria Hensley, bought in bulk. Over the past five years, my father, Thomas Hensley, had slowly erased every trace of my mother. Her sturdy oak antiques had been replaced with Victoria’s glossy mirrored furniture and cheap-looking acrylic chairs. Parentingadvice resources
A loud, artificial laugh burst from the dining room.
“Oh my god, you guys, this sheer detail is literally everything.”
It was my stepsister, Haley Hensley.
She stood beneath a blinding ring light, livestreaming to her followers while spinning in a designer trench coat that probably cost more than two months of my nursing assistant pay.
I kept my head down and tried to slip toward the basement stairs. All I wanted was the dark silence of my cramped room. I had been awake for twenty-two hours, moving patients in the pediatric oncology ward while quietly finishing the final statistical models for my doctoral thesis.
Victoria’s voice snapped through the hallway.
“Clara. Stop sneaking around.”
