PART 1

The night before Mother’s Day, my sister tagged me in the family group chat and wrote, Stay home. Don’t come tomorrow. We’re tired of your side of the family.

For a few seconds, I sat frozen on the edge of my bed in our Phoenix apartment, staring at the message while my husband, Mark, folded our daughter’s little yellow dress beside the suitcase. We had spent the whole day getting ready for the drive to my parents’ house in Scottsdale: flowers for Mom, a framed picture of the grandkids, two trays of lemon bars, and a card my six-year-old, Emma, had decorated with careful purple hearts.

My sister, Allison, had never accepted that I married Mark after my divorce. She had never accepted my stepchildren either. To her, they were strangers who didn’t belong in family pictures. Once, at Thanksgiving, she called them “extras.” When I told her never to say that again, she laughed like I was the one making things uncomfortable.