He never let me finish.
“Yeah, yeah. Government paperwork. I get it.”
Or he’d turn toward my brother.
“Tell your sister about that business proposal.”
And the conversation would move on.
My brother wasn’t cruel in the same way my father was.
He simply accepted the hierarchy we’d grown up with.
His ambitions were important.
My accomplishments were background noise.
My mother maintained the arrangement with a gentle smile.
“That sounds stressful,” she’d say whenever I mentioned work.
Then she’d change the subject.
Eventually, I stopped mentioning it.
I attended family dinners when I could.
I brought birthday presents.
I sent holiday cards.
I listened to long discussions about my brother’s latest investment idea while nobody asked about the
uniform I had arrived wearing or the assignment I’d recently completed.
Sometimes, I’d drive home and wonder whether they would notice if I simply stopped coming.
