Part 1

When my parents increased my rent for the third time in eighteen months, my mother framed it like an act of sacrifice.

“You know how things are,” she said, crossing her arms in the kitchen as though she were the one burdened. “Your brother has two kids now. Family helps family.”

By family, she meant my brother, Mason.

She always meant Mason.

I was living in the detached garage apartment behind my parents’ house in Raleigh. After my divorce, I moved there because it was supposed to be temporary, practical, and “good for everyone.” I paid rent on time, bought my own groceries, covered half the utilities, and drove my father to appointments when his blood pressure spiked and my mother said she was “too stressed” to handle hospitals.

Meanwhile, Mason drifted from one failed idea to the next with the calm confidence of someone who had never been allowed to fail hard enough to learn from it. First the food truck. Then a crypto mining warehouse. Then a boutique gym. Each collapse ended the same way: my parents looked at him with sympathy and at me with expectation.

So when my mother slid a handwritten note across the table with the new amount, I wasn’t surprised.

I was almost impressed.

It was nearly double what I’d been paying.

“That’s ridiculous,” I said.

My father didn’t even glance up from his coffee. “Take it or leave it.”

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