The family split over it, predictably. Some of them sided with Justin — “she reported her own brother, how could she.” Others, quietly, reached out to me for the first time in years, having watched the golden child forge his sister’s name and finally seeing the family dynamic for what it always was.
I didn’t spend much energy on any of them. I’d spent thirty-nine years being the one who paid, who handled it, who was strong so everyone else could be weak. Discovering that they’d escalated from using my generosity to forging my consent was, in a terrible way, clarifying. It ended something I should have ended years earlier.
My father called, near the end, with the closest thing to an apology he had.
“We shouldn’t have let it go that far. Justin shouldn’t have — the contract was wrong. I know that. But he’s your brother, Samantha. Family is family.”
