I was seventeen the year my little brother made me a prom dress out of our late mother’s jeans, and by the end of that night, the whole school knew exactly what kind of woman my stepmother was. My brother Noah was fifteen. He had always been quiet in the way people mistake for softness, but there was steel in him when it mattered. Our mom died when I was twelve. Dad remarried Carla two years later, and when he died of a heart attack last year, the house changed faster than grief could settle. Carla took over everything at once—the bills, the mail, the bank accounts, the locks on the filing cabinet, the tone of every room.

Mom had left money behind for Noah and me. Dad used to call it our “important-things fund.” College. Emergencies. Milestones. The kind of moments parents save for because they want their kids to feel protected, even if they aren’t there to see it.

Apparently Carla had her own definition of important. When I brought up prom, she was in the kitchen scrolling through her phone like the rest of us were background noise. “Prom is in three weeks,” I said. “I need a dress.” She didn’t even look up at first. “Prom dresses are a ridiculous waste of money.”

“Mom left money for things like this.” That made her glance at me. Not kindly. Just enough to let me know she’d heard me and planned to hurt me with it. “That money keeps this house running now.”