Chapter 1
My mother, Marietta, had never made much of a secret about which of her children she considered the real investment. My half-sister Camille was seven years younger than me, the daughter of my mother's second marriage, and for as long as I could remember, Camille had occupied a place in my mother's attention that I'd stopped competing for sometime in my twenties, once I'd understood the competition wasn't winnable and wasn't, in the end, worth the energy.
I'd made my peace with that a long time ago. What I hadn't expected was for it to extend to my own daughter.
Aubrielle's sixth birthday party was in our backyard, balloons and a banner and a gift table my mother had helped set up that morning, which should have been a good sign and, for the first hour, genuinely was. I'd stepped inside to grab more ice, and by the time I came back out through the side gate, my mother was standing over that gift table pulling a wrapped box toward herself while my daughter stumbled backward, having clearly just been shoved.
"Those belong to my daughter now," my mother said, flat and certain, like she was correcting an error rather than committing one.
May you like
Aubrielle saw me before I'd said a word and ran straight into my arms, crying hard enough that it took her a second to get the sentence out. "Daddy... she takes everything Grandma buys me."
My mother laughed, actually laughed, waving a hand like the whole thing was beneath serious discussion. "They're just toys."
