One morning, after I had already asked my sister several times to stop walking through our kitchen wearing nothing but a bath towel, she casually asked my husband to grab the coffee filters from the top cabinet for her.
Andrew looked at the cabinet.
Then at Kayla.
Then he picked up his coffee, stood, and silently walked out of the room.
Kayla stared after him.
“What is his problem?”
I reached past her and closed the cabinet door she had left open.
“You are.”
She laughed.
Not an embarrassed laugh.
Not even an apologetic one.
It was the kind of little disbelieving laugh that said she thought I was being ridiculous.
And that was the moment something in me finally snapped.
But to understand why, you need to know how my younger sister ended up living in our house.
Two weeks earlier, Kayla had appeared on my doorstep with two suitcases, less than three hundred dollars in her bank account, and mascara streaked beneath both eyes.
Her boyfriend, Eric, had ended their six-year relationship and told her to move out.
That was basically all she would tell me.
I didn’t ask whether she had enough money for a motel.
I didn’t tell her to call friends and see who had a spare couch.
I didn’t think through any of the practical questions a more cautious person probably would have asked.
