“I’ll Venmo you like, 50 bucks for it. Chill.”
That’s what my sister said, staring at the shattered pieces of our father’s rocking chair. The one he spent a whole winter carving by hand for our mom.
A chair her friend broke at a party she threw at our family cabin.
For twenty years, I was the one who fixed the roof and stained the deck. My weekends were spent with a toolbox, not a mimosa.
She called my sacrifice a “hobby.” She believed her fifty-percent ownership meant she had zero percent of the responsibility.
She thought our father’s legacy could be measured in square footage and social media likes, but she was about to learn that my receipts came with twenty years of interest.
The Weight of Memory: What the Lake Remembers
The splinter worked its way into my thumb, a sharp, unwelcome punctuation to the Saturday morning. I pulled it out with my teeth, the taste of pine and varnish bitter on my tongue. The porch deck needed this coat of sealant every two years, a ritual my father had taught me. “You let the wood dry out, Evie,” he’d said, his voice a low rumble, “and you lose the whole house.”
For twenty years, I’d kept the wood from drying out. I’d patched the roof, cleaned the gutters, and waged a quiet, seasonal war against the carpenter ants. My husband, Mark, called it my second full-time job. Our son, Leo, just thought it was the old house where the cell service died. To me, it was the last place on earth that still felt like my parents. The air smelled of them.
My phone buzzed against the warped wood of the porch railing. It was Mark. “Everything okay up there?”
“Just me and the orbital sander. The usual romantic getaway.”
He chuckled. “Don’t let the quiet fool you. I saw Chloe’s latest post. Looks like she’s ‘manifesting a weekend vibe.’ You know what that means.”
I sighed, looking out at the calm, grey water of the lake. “I know exactly what it means.” A crumpled letter in my pocket from the Lakeside Homeowners’ Association felt heavier. It was the third noise complaint this summer. It spoke of “unauthorized guests” and “excessive late-night disturbances,” all polite code for my sister’s impromptu festivals.
“Just… try not to let her get to you this time, Ev. You have as much right to be there as she does. More, if you ask me.”
“Try telling her that,” I murmured, watching a lone loon dive beneath the surface. “I’ll talk to you later.”
I went back to work, the rhythmic drone of the sander a poor substitute for the silence. I was trying to race the clock, to soak up enough peace to last me through the coming storm. But the storm, I knew, was already on its way.
The Hashtag Arrives
A white BMW convertible, obnoxious as a dental drill, screamed up the gravel drive an hour later. It wasn’t just a car; it was a declaration. The driver’s side door opened, and my sister, Chloe, emerged. She was twenty-eight, dressed in a neon pink athletic set that probably cost more than the new water heater I’d installed last month.
She didn’t say hello. Instead, she held her phone up, pirouetting slowly. “Hey, my loves! We made it! The #CabinVibes are officially immaculate!”
Three of her friends, all looking like clones in different-colored yoga pants, tumbled out of the car. They moved like a school of fish, chattering and oblivious, their rolling suitcases rattling over the stones. None of them so much as glanced at me, the middle-aged woman in paint-splattered jeans kneeling on the porch. I was just part of the scenery. Part of the “rustic aesthetic.”
Chloe finally lowered her phone. “Ev, hey. The Wi-Fi is acting tragic again. Can you call the company or, like, reset the thingy? Madi needs to upload a reel for her brand sponsor.”
“Hello to you, too, Chloe.” My voice was flat.
She didn’t catch the tone. She was already inside, her voice echoing through the small cabin. “Oh my God, this place is so dark. We need to get some ring lights in here. And this TV is, like, from a museum.”
I stood up, my knees cracking a protest. I followed her in, the smell of their perfume already clashing with the familiar scent of cedar and old books. Madi was already trying to plug six different devices into a single, weary power strip. I was no longer the co-owner of my parents’ legacy. I was the unpaid property manager.
A Different Kind of Silence
By ten o’clock, the house was vibrating. A deep, relentless bassline pulsed through the floorboards, rattling the teacups my mother had collected. It felt like a physical assault, each beat a punch against the cabin’s old bones.
I retreated to my bedroom, the one my parents had used, and shut the door. It did little to block the noise. I could hear high-pitched, shrieking laughter and the clink of bottles. The party had spilled out onto the porch I’d just spent all day sanding and sealing. I pictured scuff marks from careless heels, sticky rings from beer cans.
Mark texted me. How bad is it?
I typed back, They’re playing music with no words and filming themselves drinking something blue.
I’m sorry, hon. Want me to drive up?
No. It’s okay. Just makes me tired. It was more than tired. It was a deep, soul-level weariness. I was a guest in my own sanctuary, hiding from strangers who treated it like a disposable Airbnb.
I tried to read, but the thumping music made the words swim on the page. I could hear them in the living room, their voices loud and performative. They weren’t talking to each other; they were narrating their night for an invisible audience online. Every moment was content. Every experience was a potential post. My parents’ quiet retreat had been rebranded as a backdrop.
Eventually, I gave up. I put my book down and stared at the ceiling, listening to the sound of my heritage being consumed, one filtered selfie at a time. The silence I had craved this morning felt like a distant memory, something from another lifetime.
The Price of a Vibe
Around midnight, my throat was parched. I decided to brave the war zone for a glass of water. The living room was worse than I’d imagined. The air hung thick with the sickly-sweet smell of vape smoke and spilled liquor. A wet towel was draped over my mother’s favorite reading lamp. Someone had kicked off their muddy sneakers onto the braided rug she’d spent a whole winter making.
My eyes scanned the chaos, and then they stopped. They froze on the corner of the room.
My father’s rocking chair was gone. No, not gone. It was in pieces.
The curved back was snapped clean in two. One of the hand-carved runners lay on its side near a puddle of something sticky. It was the chair he had made for my mother when she was pregnant with me. He’d worked on it every evening for a month in the garage, whistling as he sanded the oak. It was the most valuable thing in the house.
One of Chloe’s friends, a lanky guy with a vacant smile, stumbled past me. He pointed at the wreckage with his beer bottle. “Whoops,” he slurred, laughing. “Guess the old thing couldn’t handle the vibes.”
I couldn’t speak. I just stared at the broken wood, my throat closing up.
Chloe, filming herself doing a shot a few feet away, noticed my expression. She lowered her phone and sauntered over, her face a mask of mild annoyance.
She glanced at the chair, then at me, and shrugged. “It was ancient, Ev. Don’t have a meltdown.” She pulled out her phone again, not for a video this time, but for an app. “Look, I’ll Venmo you, like, fifty bucks for it. Just chill out.”
The Price of Sweat: The Morning After the Flood
The sun rose on a battlefield. Morning light, usually so gentle in this house, was now a harsh interrogator, exposing every sin of the night before. It illuminated the sticky rings on the coffee table, the greasy smear on the windowpane, the constellation of crushed chips ground into the rug.
I started with a trash bag. It was the only place to begin. I collected empty bottles, wadded-up napkins, and plastic cups half-filled with that foul blue liquid. The air was stale with the ghost of the party.
Under a couch cushion, I found a used condom.
Something inside me, a dam I’d been carefully maintaining for twenty years, finally broke. The grief over my father’s chair curdled into a cold, hard rage. I dropped the trash bag in the middle of the floor, the bottles clanking like a death knell. I was done. Done cleaning up their messes. Done being the silent, responsible older sister. Done pretending this was anything other than a hostile takeover.
I marched down the short hall to the guest room. The door was ajar. Chloe was still in bed, a silk sleep mask pushed up on her forehead, scrolling through her phone with one perfectly manicured thumb. The remnants of the party were all around her, too. An empty pizza box on the floor, clothes strewn over the antique hope chest. She hadn’t even bothered to take her makeup off.
She didn’t look up when I entered. “Did you make coffee?” she asked, her voice raspy.
I didn’t answer. I just stood in the doorway, my hands clenched into fists at my sides, and let the silence stretch until it was uncomfortable enough for her to finally lower her phone and look at me.
About the Author
