MY STEPMOTHER MADE ME GIVE MY HALLOWEEN COSTUME TO HER DAUGHTER—AND MY OWN FATHER CALLED ME SELFISH FOR WANTING TO KEEP IT

The condo on Barton Springs Road smelled like old cedar, roasted coffee beans, and the kind of expensive paper Sarah used to print out corporate spreadsheets. It didn't smell like bleach and lemon-scented floor wax the way Karen’s house always did—that artificial, chemical perfection designed to hide the rot underneath.

"Your room is through here," Sarah said, dropping my duffel bag by the foot of a wrought-iron bed frame that looked like it had been salvaged from an old Victorian house in Hyde Park.

The room wasn't large, but it had a tall window that looked out over the canopy of live oaks lining the creek, and the afternoon light spilled across the hardwood floor in long, amber stripes. In the corner sat my mother’s cedar chest—the real one, the heavy one with the brass latch that Dad had tried to sell on Facebook Marketplace back in November before Sarah’s lawyers threatened him with an emergency injunction.

"I called the Travis County clerk's office an hour ago," Sarah said, leaning against the doorframe while she scrolled through her phone with one thumb. "Your father signed the waiver. He didn't have a choice. If he hadn't, the district attorney would have opened a formal inquiry into the unauthorized withdrawals from your trust account. As it stands, he’s walking away with a ruined credit score, zero equity in that Slaughter Lane money-pit, and a former fiancée who is currently threatening to sue him for breach of promise in Collin County."

I walked over to the cedar chest, unlatched the heavy brass hook, and lifted the lid. The familiar scent of dried lavender and old paper rushed up to meet me—the smell of my mother’s skin, her handwriting, her kitchen aprons, and the small porcelain teacup she used to drink chamomile out of on rainy Sunday afternoons.

Right at the top, resting on a folded quilt of blue and white squares, was the silver-trimmed belt Ava had pulled out from under her bed in November, along with the crumpled purple fabric of the Halloween costume that was supposed to have been thrown into the dumpster.

"Are you going to school on Monday?" Sarah asked, her tone softening just a fraction, though her eyes remained as sharp as broken glass.

"Yeah," I said, running my thumb over the stiff, sugar-stained satin of the belt. "Westlake Middle. Seventh grade. Second semester."

"They're snobs, Lily," Sarah said bluntly. "Every single one of them lives in a house twice as big as the one your father lost, and half of their parents are lawyers or venture capitalists who think ethics is something you discuss over wine at Barton Creek Country Club. But you've got your mother’s head for numbers, and you've got my bank records. If anyone gives you trouble about where you came from, you just remind them that you own the deed to your own education."

I smiled—a small, tight smile that didn't reach my eyes, but it was real. For the first time in two years, I wasn't walking on eggshells. I wasn't waiting for a bright yellow sticky note to appear on my bedroom door telling me what I wasn't allowed to touch.

That evening, as the sun dipped below the Austin skyline and the downtown skyscrapers began to blink on against the purple Texas dusk, I sat at the small wooden desk Sarah had set up by the window. I opened my blue pre-algebra notebook to a fresh page, picked up a sharp black pen, and wrote the date at the top: *January 5, 2027.*