Chapter 2: The Budget of Love
To understand the math of our fallout, you have to understand the town that raised us. Milfield was a place where the population hovered around two thousand, and the social hierarchy was dictated by the pews of the First Baptist Church. My father, Kenneth, was a man of repetitive motions—thirty-one years at the lumber yard, the same boots, the same 5:42 p.m. arrival every evening. My mother ran the household and the church committee with the same terrifying precision, a woman who could weaponize a potluck casserole to signal social status.
In our house, love was a finite resource—a strict budget where I was the overhead and my sister, Paige, was the luxury investment. Paige was the “Sunshine Child,” the homecoming queen who floated through life on a cloud of maternal adoration. I was the “Steady One,” the daughter who got perfect math scores and washed the dishes without being asked, yet somehow remained invisible.
When I received a full-ride scholarship to Ohio State, it was the first time I felt I had outperformed the budget. But even then, the card my mother slipped into my suitcase—Come home soon. You belong here—wasn’t an invitation of love; it was a leash.
