Chapter 2

Corinne's smile dropped off her face in an instant.

She flung her suitcase down, and the metal handle cracked against the doorsill with an ugly clang.

"Ursula Matthews. What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means..."

I raised my eyes to her, neither meek nor sharp.

"I bought this house. It's my call."

She glared at me, her face gone gray, her lips trembling twice.

Nathan poked his head out from behind her, his voice all snide singsong.

"Mom, what'd I tell you? She's a big influencer with millions of followers now. Why would she still know a bunch of poor relatives like us?"

Lesley chewed her gum, popped a bubble, and picked up the thread lazily.

"Sis, didn't your farm video last month sell three thousand pounds of apples? The commission's gotta be tens of thousands at least. What's the big deal about clearing out a room for us?"

Cold sweat prickled up my back.

She knew the exact size of that commission better than I did, and I was the one who'd earned it.

It had been the same in my last life. They tallied the income from every single video I posted, then came to collect it down to the last cent.

Clearly they'd been putting in quiet work behind my back all along.

As the standoff hardened, I gripped the door handle and was about to speak when a rush of footsteps came from the mouth of the lane.

I turned to look. My aunt-in-law, my fifth uncle, a cousin-aunt — seven or eight relatives came filing in from the mouth of the lane, some carrying fruit, some with red envelopes tucked away, every one of them wearing a smile.

The aunt-in-law reached me first and reached out to grab my arm.

"Ursula, it's been so long, and look how pretty you've gotten! I hear you're a big influencer now?"

Before her hand could touch me, Corinne had already spun around to meet her, her voice shooting up.

"You're just in time! Settle this for me! I came all this way with the kids to see her, and she won't even let us in the door! Where's the justice in that?"

The aunt-in-law's expression changed at once, and she turned on me with a string of accusations.

"Ursula, this is on you. Have you forgotten how your aunt raised you all those years? And your uncle..."

In the past they always did this, using my parents' deaths, using my uncle's death, to guilt me into bowing my head.

"How my uncle died? Of course I remember."

Only this time I didn't play by their script.

I cut her off.

The air went quiet for a beat.

Corinne's face went white.

My fifth uncle cleared his throat, stepped forward, and lowered his voice.

"Ursula, your elders are talking. Don't talk back."

"Your aunt's had a hard time these past years. You've made something of yourself, so what's wrong with lending a hand? Your cousins are still young. If you don't look after them, who will?"

"Nathan's twenty. He's a year younger than me."

I looked at him and said it word by word.

"At his age I was already earning my own tuition. Lesley's sixteen. Her compulsory schooling ended a long time ago. If she can't get into a decent high school and has to pay eighty grand for a performing-arts track, why is that on me?"

Lesley's head snapped up, and the gum popped out of her mouth onto the ground.

"Who said I can't get in? You film tacky little country videos. What gives you the right to look down on me?"

"Then bring me your report card, and I'll treat the eighty grand as an investment in you."

I fixed my eyes on her, half smiling.

"You dare?"

Lesley's lips trembled twice, and she said nothing more.

That was it. She was rattled.

Her practice-exam scores had slipped out once when Nathan posted them in the family group chat by accident. Three subjects, less than a hundred points combined.

Seeing the standoff frozen, the aunt-in-law hurried to smooth it over.

"All right, all right, don't stand here in the doorway arguing. Come inside first, come inside and talk..."

And with that she moved to push her way in.

I sidestepped and blocked the doorframe dead.

"I said it. There's no room in my house."

The aunt-in-law's face collapsed completely.

"Ursula Matthews, grown your wings now, have you? When your parents died, if your aunt hadn't taken you in, would you be where you are today?"

"When my parents died, they left two hundred thousand in compensation."

I looked at her, weighing what they'd come here for, and cut deeper.

"That money was for my education. My aunt took a hundred and eighty thousand of it and left me twenty thousand to cover all three years of middle school."

"Did you know about that?"