On Christmas, my stepmom gave my sister a key. Told me ‘Be grateful.’ Then I saw my name on the deed скачать в хорошем качестве

On Christmas, my stepmom gave my sister a key. Told me ‘Be grateful.’ Then I saw my name on the deed

I am twenty six years old. My sister, Bella, is twenty two. Our stepmother, Brenda, has been married to our father for ten years. She never liked me. She always loved Bella. Bella is her biological daughter from her first marriage. I am my father’s daughter from his first marriage. My mother passed away when I was a child. Brenda came into our lives a few years later. She tried to be a mother to me at first. But her efforts felt thin. They felt like a performance. With Bella, it was different. Her love for her own daughter was a roaring fire. Her affection for me was a tiny, flickering candle that she often forgot to light. Christmas was always the worst time of year for this. Brenda used gifts to show her preference. One year, Bella got a new car. I got a savings bond that would mature in twenty years. Another year, Bella got a trip to Europe. I got a new set of towels for my bathroom. My father would watch these exchanges with a pained look on his face. He never said anything. He hated confrontation. He just wanted peace. I learned early on that my role in this family was to help keep that peace. That meant accepting the towels with a smile. It meant saying thank you for the savings bond. It meant not making waves. This Christmas felt different from the start. The tension in the house was thicker. My father had sold our childhood home a few months prior. It was the house my mother had decorated. It was filled with memories of her. He said it was too big for just the three of them now that I had mostly moved my life into an apartment for my job, even though I still kept a room there. He and Brenda bought a new, smaller house in a different neighborhood. It was Brenda’s dream house, she called it. She decorated it from top to bottom. There was no trace of my mother in this new house. There was barely any trace of my father. It was Brenda’s showroom. We were all gathered in the living room on Christmas morning. The tree was huge and covered in gold and white ornaments that Brenda had picked out. The gifts were piled high underneath. My father handed out the presents. I got a few nice things from him. A new coat. A gift card to my favorite bookstore. Then it was time for Brenda’s gifts. She made a big show of it. She always did. She handed a small, elegantly wrapped box to Bella. Bella tore it open. Inside, nestled on a bed of velvet, was a single, shiny house key. Bella gasped. “What is this?” she asked, her eyes wide.