Love Lost, Life Reclaimed

My mother' s voice cut through the party noise. "If it wasn't for my sacrifice, how could Kyle be so successful today?"

She was openly boasting that she' d given my college fund to my cousin, Kyle.

I stood hidden in the shadows, my hands shaking. Years of scholarships, working dead-end jobs, meticulously saving every penny for my Ivy League dream-all gone.

"Ethan was never going to amount to much anyway," my aunt, her sister, added with a sneer. "Look at him now. A dead-end job, a miserable wife."