The dining room in my parents’ massive suburban home was a suffocatingly perfect stage. It was a room designed exclusively for the performance of a life they did not actually lead. The long mahogany table was polished to a mirror shine, reflecting the warm, golden light of the dripping crystal chandelier above. Expensive silver cutlery flanked fine bone china, and the air smelled faintly of roasted lamb and my mother’s cloying, designer perfume.
I sat at the far end of the table, as I always did. I was twenty-eight years old, but in this house, I was a ghost. I was Maya, the invisible daughter, the family scapegoat, the one whose sole purpose was to absorb the toxicity so the others could shine.
At the opposite end sat my sister, Chloe. She was twenty-six, wearing a tailored silk dress that probably cost a month of my salary. She was cruel, vain, and possessed a sociopathic ability to manipulate our parents. Beside her sat my mother, a deeply narcissistic woman whose smile never reached her cold eyes, and my father, a silent, enabling man who funded the delusion.
