Chapter 2

The slap landed loud and hard.

The whole crowd went quiet in an instant, every gawking pair of eyes fixed on my face.

I turned my head slowly and looked at Grandma, the one who'd hit me.

Her wrinkled face was twisted with rage, her chest heaving, and she jabbed a finger at me and spat,

"You have no manners! Is this how you treat your elders?"

"You'd push your uncle's whole family to their death over a little money!"

"How did our family ever raise a cold-blooded animal like you!"

The aunt jumped right in, dropping onto the ground, slapping her own thighs and wailing,

"Ma! You have to stand up for us!"

"Five years of hard work. Even if we've got nothing to show for it, we put in the sweat!"

"Now one word from her and we're packing up and getting kicked out. There's no living like this!"

The two of them traded lines back and forth, turning black into white.

I held my burning cheek, and all I felt was how absurd it was.

"Grandma, they smashed the load-bearing wall of my building first. That's against the law."

"And they deliberately destroyed my goods. Hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth."

"Yours, yours, what's yours!" Grandma's cane came down hard against the ground. "You're a girl. Sooner or later you'll marry out. You're water thrown out the door!"

"This house, the family property, who's it being kept for if not your brother? So he uses it a little early. So what? That's how it should be!"

"How it should be?" I repeated the words, and inch by inch my heart went cold.

"That's right! That's exactly how it should be! Karl is the eldest grandson of this family!"

"You won't help him out, fine, but stabbing him in the back too? What are you playing at!"

I held my ground. "They compensate me for my losses and restore the wall to how it was. Otherwise there's nothing to talk about."

"You still dare to make demands!" Grandma shook all over with fury and raised her hand to strike again.

"Stop!"

At that low shout, my parents finally arrived.

My mother saw my swollen, red face, her eyes rimming with tears, and moved to pull me toward her, but my father yanked her back.

He walked straight up to Grandma. Not to stand up for me. He wore a wide placating smile and soothed her.

"Ma, calm down, please. We're all family. We can talk this out."

Then he turned to me, his tone almost an order.

"Marian, what are you standing there for? Apologize to your grandmother, now!"

I stared at him, not believing it.

"Apologize? Why should I apologize?"

"You talked back to your elders and got your uncle's shop shut down. You don't think you're in the wrong?"

His voice turned severe.

"Get down on your knees, now! Kowtow to your grandmother and your aunt, and we'll put this behind us!"

My mother stood there crying too, coaxing me.

"Nono, be good. It's just one storefront. Don't tear the whole family apart over it."

"Just think of it as... as an early wedding gift for your brother, all right?"

Just one storefront.

An early wedding gift for your brother.

I looked at them, at my spineless, useless father, at my mother who only ever smoothed things over.

Then I looked at Karl, smug beside them, and at the aunt wearing that "smart of you to know your place" look on her face.

In that moment I felt like a complete joke.

The family bond they kept talking about was, in their eyes, nothing but a reason for me to keep backing down.

I shook off my father's hand as it reached for me, said nothing, and turned to leave.

Behind me came my father's furious roar. "Marian! You dare walk away! You ungrateful daughter!"

I didn't look back.

From today on, I had no family anymore.