after eight years of being pushed aside, I bought a beachfront resort and booked every room. I told my mom, “Just like your house, mine’s full now.”

My name is Amelia, and for eight excruciating years, my family’s summer vacation was a tradition I was never a part of. My mother, Evelyn, has always played favorites, a fact as constant and undeniable as the tides near her North Carolina beach cottage. My older sister, Olivia, was her sun, and I, it seemed, was a distant, forgotten moon.