Their Own Grave

My phone rang, a too-loud explosion from my brother Kevin, announcing we were rich and a tech giant was buying our block because our family home was "the centerpiece."

My mother, Brenda, immediately piled on, her voice sharp with a lifetime of disappointment, reminding me how I was "wasting my life on other people' s kids for pennies" while Kevin hit the jackpot.

I felt the old, familiar tightness in my chest, the feeling of being small, of being less-than, as they reveled in their imagined fortune.

But then, a text from my daughter Chloe shattered their delusion: Jayden was an idiot.