“That sounds incredible,” I said, stepping forward. “What time is our flight?”

The silence that followed was instant and absolute. My father looked at me as if I had started speaking Aramaic. My mother’s smile didn’t drop, but her eyes went cold—a look I knew well.

“Wendy,” my father said, his voice dropping an octave, “you don’t need to know the flight time.”

I blinked. “I don’t understand.”

“You’re not going,” he said. He didn’t even whisper it. He said it in front of thirty witnesses. “Someone has to stay behind to watch the kids. Megan and Derek need a real vacation.”

Thirty pairs of eyes turned to me. I stood there, freezing in my simple black dress, holding a dirty dessert plate I’d just cleared from the table. I wasn’t a daughter in that moment. I wasn’t a sister. I was infrastructure. I was the help.

“But…” I started, my voice trembling.

“Honestly, Wendy,” my mother cut in, her tone sharp enough to slice glass. “You don’t have anything important to do. Family comes first. We all make sacrifices.”