I Escaped the Family That Only Wanted a Son

In Greenhollow we have a custom.

When a child turns eighteen, the parents hand back all the holiday cash they've saved up over the years. We call it "returning the principal."

After that, whether you stay in town or go out to make your own way, you put down your own roots.

On Dylan Fox's birthday, in front of the whole family, Mom passed the savings book to him.

Inside was every dollar of holiday money—mine and his—saved from the time we were small.

I was carrying the dish I'd just cooked to the table when it hit me that my own eighteenth birthday had come and gone three whole months ago.