His Twenty-Four House Rules Only Trapped Me

That was the moment I should have understood. The Weiss family rules only ever bound me.

Beside us, Agatha Weiss let out a scoff.

"You live in my family's house, you eat my family's food, and you've still got the nerve to ask for money?"

I opened the billing app on my phone.

"I transfer your mother five thousand a month for living expenses. I pay the utilities and the building fees. The eight thousand for your exam prep course — that was mine too."

Agatha's face went red.

"Wasn't that my brother who asked you to help out?"

I looked at Irvin.

"Are you paying it back?"

His face darkened.

"Do we really have to settle every cent today?"

"Weren't you the ones who started calling me the maid?"

I pulled up my notes.

Phyllis's medical checkup, thirty-six hundred. John Weiss's blood-pressure medication, twenty-one hundred. Agatha's interview outfit, eighteen hundred.

The relatives who came to stay, the grocery money I covered, twenty-four hundred. And two years of housework.

I used to think family didn't keep accounts with each other.

Now they'd reminded me I wasn't family.

Phyllis was shaking with rage.

"Irvin, look at her. She isn't even married in yet, and already she's like this!"

Irvin took a deep breath.

"Kayla, apologize to my mother."

I lifted my head.

"Why?"

"Today is her birthday."

"So she gets to give the bracelet that was meant for me to someone else, call me petty in front of everyone, and let Marie call me the maid?"

He paused.

"No one ever actually said that bracelet definitely had to go to you."

When those words landed, something in my chest took the hit.

Marie lowered her head.

"Maybe I should just go. It seems like I'm causing trouble between you two."

Phyllis grabbed her arm at once.

"Go where? You stay and keep me company. It makes me happy."

Irvin looked at me.

"Just hold your tongue. No one's throwing you out."

No one was throwing me out. But every word they said told me to get lost.

I went back to the room for my coat.

Outside the door, Phyllis was still cursing.

"She's banking on the wedding, that's all. Now she thinks she can put on airs."

Marie murmured something soothing.

"Auntie, maybe Kayla's just tired."

Irvin said, "Let her cool off. She'll come out on her own tonight."

I stood in the room, looking at the red-covered booklet on the nightstand. The Twenty-Four House Rules.

On the first page was Irvin's handwriting.

"Don't be afraid. You have me."

I stared at those words for a long time. Then I picked up a pen and wrote a line beneath them.

"Maid's wages billed separately."

At six the next morning, Phyllis called through the door.

"Kayla Swanson, where's breakfast?"

I didn't move. Ten minutes later, Irvin knocked and came in.

"My mom's stomach is bad. She can't go without food in the morning."

I said, "You can make it."

He frowned.

"I don't know how."

"Then learn."

He blinked, and his tone went soft.

"My mom spoke too harshly yesterday. We're going to try on the wedding dress today. Haven't you been looking forward to that for a long time?"

In his hand was a tube of hand cream. The brand I always used.

"I saw your hands had cracked again last night. Picked it up on the way."

Something in my chest stirred. Irvin wasn't completely incapable of being good to me.

When I worked late, he came back to pick me up.

When a relative said I had no family behind me to back me, he'd once said, with a cold face, "Kayla is going to be my wife."

It was these small scraps of kindness that made me find excuses for him, over and over.

I told myself maybe he just didn't know how to handle his mother.

Maybe things would get better after the wedding.

I took the hand cream.

"Let's go."

But the car didn't pull up at the wedding-dress shop. It stopped in front of a tearoom.

Marie was standing under the sign, wearing a pale moon-white qipao.

"You're here. The photographer's been waiting."

"Weren't we going to try on the wedding dress?"