“I’m a social worker,” I said, my voice sounding small in the cavernous dining room. “I work with at-risk youth in New Haven.”
“Oh, that’s interesting,” Travis said, leaning back, a smirk playing on his lips. “Why that field?”
I opened my mouth, a spark of passion igniting in my chest. “Well, it’s incredibly rewarding. Just last month, I helped place a sixteen-year-old girl who—”
“Don’t waste Travis’s time with your boring stories, Emily.”
My mother’s voice was a whip crack. “He’s just being polite.”
The shame was familiar, a cold cloak I wore daily. But that night, something in me snapped. Maybe it was the smirk on Travis’s face, or the way my father nodded in agreement.
“Actually,” I said, my voice trembling but audible. “It’s not boring. It matters. Unlike planning vacations to Bali.”
I didn’t see it coming.
One second, I was looking at my mother’s sneer. The next, the world exploded into white light and agony.
CRACK.
The impact was sickening. A wrench—one of my father’s heavy iron tools that had been sitting on the sideboard for a repair—connected with the left side of my face. The force tipped my chair backward. I crashed onto the hardwood, my head hitting the floor with a thud that vibrated through my teeth.
Through a haze of swimming black spots, I looked up. My mother stood over me, the wrench in her hand, her chest heaving not with regret, but with pure, unadulterated rage.
“That’s what you get for talking back!” she hissed, her face twisted into a mask of hatred. “Embarrassing your sister in front of Travis!”
