I caught my dad on my security camera planning to move my brother into my house while I was on a trip, and when my mom said, “Once everything is here, she will not make a scene. She will just accept it,” I set a trap for them.

My mother did not speak to him for two days.

But she did not override him either.

Without a family safety net to fall back on, Kyle was forced to function independently.

He applied for jobs.

Most did not call back.

A few did.

On April eighth, he started working at an Amazon fulfillment center. Eighteen dollars an hour. Four ten-hour shifts a week.

It was not glamorous.

It was not the sales management career he had always talked about.

But it was a paycheck.

Brittany lasted nineteen days after that.

“She said she didn’t sign up for this,” Kyle admitted to my father during a phone call that eventually made its way to me through Aunt Linda. “She thought I was going to level up or something.”

“And you thought Myra’s house was the level up,” my father said quietly.

Kyle did not answer.

When I heard that, I felt something unexpected.