Then my father told me about the education accounts my grandparents had opened, and how mine had funded my brother’s college preparation while I worked nights and took half a course load. And then Corwin, who had never once been asked to give anything up, slid the agreement across my kitchen table and told our mother to sign it.
She did. It took her eleven days.
The settlement came through in October and the money was repaid in full, and I did not spend it. It sits in an account I have never touched, because it turns out I never wanted the money. I wanted somebody to admit it had been mine.
They live in a rebuilt house now. My father calls on Sundays and asks about my work and actually listens to the answer. My mother and I are polite, and that may be the whole of it, and I have stopped grieving that.
Corwin insulated a shelter dormitory in Tulsa last year with his own hands, and told nobody but me.
I spent eight years being told my comfort was the flexible part of the family. I own the walls now, and I have finally stopped asking anyone’s permission to take up room in my own life.
