“It’s only for the closest family,” my dad told me as eighty guests boarded my $1.2 million yacht for my brother’s engagement party, while he laughed and thanked me for the free venue. I didn’t argue or beg to be included. I waited until they cleared the harbor, then sent the captain six words—and minutes later, the yacht began turning back toward shore.

But the story that brought us to that afternoon had begun thirteen years earlier, after my mother died.

Her name was June.

I was fifteen when cancer took her, and Weston was eighteen. The night after her funeral, I woke up thirsty and walked toward the kitchen.

Before I reached the doorway, I heard my father talking.

“From now on,” Everett Cole told my brother, “it’s just us two men.”

I stopped in the hallway.

Discover more
Browse Art Prints
Apples
Apple
Weston asked, “What about Avery?”

Dad gave a quiet laugh.

“Avery will be fine. Girls always land on their feet.”

I remember staring at the empty glass in my hand.

At fifteen, I didn’t have language for what I had just heard. I only understood that my father had divided the grieving people in our house into two groups.

The people whose pain required care.

And me.