Chapter 1

1: 1

The year my parents divorced, I went with my wealthy mother, and my sister went with our unemployed father.

My mother lived in a two-thousand-square-foot place downtown, but she wouldn't let me use the hot water.

In the dead of winter, she dragged me out of bed at four every morning.

"Your sister's out in the countryside. She probably doesn't even have running water. What makes you think you get to sleep in?"

I carried two plastic buckets on a pole and walked nearly two miles to the riverside to haul water.

The ice cut my hands, blood dripping into the snow, and all my mother did was complain that I was too slow.

"Edwina Fox's done farm work since she was little. Why are you so soft?"

My sister wore an old padded coat, so I wasn't allowed a down jacket.

My sister ate stale bread with pickles, so even on my birthday all I got to gnaw on was a cold dinner roll.

My sister dropped out after middle school, so when I tested into a top high school, my mother tore up the acceptance letter on the spot.

"She ruined her whole life following your father. What makes you think you get a future?"

I went to my father, crying.

He stood in the rain in his delivery gear, his face full of guilt, and handed me a bank card.

"All these years, your mother's been sending your sister fifty thousand a month in support money."

I froze.

Then he told me my sister had been sent abroad to study long ago.

That morning at four, my mother threw the water buckets down at my feet as usual, and for the first time, I didn't go to the riverside.

Instead, I pushed open the door to my sister's bedroom, the one that was always locked.

Inside, the walls were covered with photos of her skiing, riding horses, celebrating birthdays out in some other state.

On the back of every photo, in my mother's own handwriting.

"My Edwina has suffered so much. Mommy will make it all up to you with the very best the world has to offer."

So it wasn't that she couldn't bear to let me have a good life.

She just thought I didn't deserve one.

……

When I turned over the last photo, I heard keys hit the floor out in the hallway.

My mother stood in the doorway, her eyes locked on the album in my hands.

"Who said you could come in here?"

In one photo, my sister wore a white helmet, sitting on a small brown horse.

The date in the bottom right corner was July, three years ago.

That was the month my mother told me my sister had broken her leg hauling bricks on a construction site.

To make me feel her pain, my mother tied my right leg to a dining chair and wouldn't let me move for a whole day.

But my sister had never broken her leg.

She was learning to ride horses at a French estate.

"Where is my sister, really?"

My mother reached out her hand.

"Give me the album."

"She was never in the countryside, was she?"

I held the photo up in front of her face.

"And she never hauled bricks either, did she?"

My mother lunged at me.

The hard corner of the album slammed into my brow, and she grabbed my hair and dragged me out of the room.

"You go through my things, you go see your father, and now you dare to question me?"

"I just want to know where my sister is."

"What gives you the right to know?"

She kicked the back of my knee.

"Edwina knew how to earn money at ten. What were you doing at ten?"

"Hauling water for you at the riverside."

Her hand came down hard across my face.

My mother grabbed the two plastic buckets by the wall and shoved open the balcony door.

"You didn't want to haul water?"

"Then you can stay out here."

She pushed me onto the balcony.

The glass door locked behind me, and the heavy curtains slid shut.

Four in the morning, and the whole building was still sunk in darkness.

I had only my pajamas on, and the melting snow soaked through my pant legs fast.

My hands and feet went numb, my knees stiffening with pain.

I beat on the door again and again, my voice going from a shriek to a rasp.

"Mom, I was wrong."

"I won't ask about my sister anymore."

"I'll go haul the water. Please, open the door."

At last her cold voice came from inside.

"Edwina was younger than you back then, and she was never this soft."

Behind the curtains, everything went still again.

Near dawn, a neighbor in the building across the way spotted me.

Before long, building management was knocking at the door.

Only then did my mother pull back the curtain, but first she raised her phone to take pictures.

"Edwina slept under a bridge as a kid and didn't die. You can't handle a little while on the balcony?"

Once the door opened and I'd barely stepped into the living room, my legs gave out under me.

My neighbor Renata Chavez wanted to call an ambulance, but my mother pressed her hand down over her phone.

"I've worked in family education for years. I know how to handle a child."

"She's just had it too easy. She doesn't know how to be grateful."

Renata still tried to stop her, but my mother had already dragged me into the storage room and tossed a thin blanket onto the floor.

I slept for a full day.

When I woke, my knee was swollen too badly to bend.

My mother's gentle voice drifted in from outside the door.

"Edwina, the new skis I ordered for you are all set."

"Your little sister's doing great. She even went out on the balcony on her own today to look at the snow."

I braced myself against the wall and stood.

On the shoe cabinet by the entryway, a camera glowed with a red light.

The lens was aimed at the balcony.

My mother woke me at four every morning not just to make me haul water.

She'd been filming the whole time.

And all those cries for help I thought no one would ever hear, she had saved long ago and sent to someone else.