“With the booking I paid for.”
Another pause. Then came the line that still twists my stomach when I remember it.
“Well,” my father said when he took the phone, “it was only for family.”
Only for family.
I don’t think I spoke for a full three seconds.
My name is Rachel Mercer. I was thirty-seven, single, on partner track at a commercial real estate firm, and apparently not family enough for the vacation I had funded. My younger brother, Caleb, went with his wife and their two kids. My older sister, Lindsey, went with her husband and teenage daughter. My parents posted sunset photos, smiling beach dinners, and one especially painful picture of all of them in matching white linen at the luau I paid for.
I didn’t know any of that yet.
Not until after the call.
At first, there was just the sentence. Only for family.
Then the full meaning hit all at once.
