Sunshine in Asheville

I never imagined that something like this would happen to me.

In the living room, my parents sat solemnly in the main seats, my younger brother was sitting on the sofa beside them, his head lowered, silent.

I stood alone in front of them, isolated and helpless.

"Why..." I couldn't believe these words were coming from my parents, who had loved me for 23 years.

"No why," my mother said impatiently. "Your brother is getting married, and we're short on money for the house." She sighed, clearly irritated. "It’s just $20,000. Why are you acting like we’re asking for your life?"

"But Mom, I only have $20,000. I was saving this for my wedding with Lucas," I explained, my voice shaking.

"You only have $20,000 because you're not making enough. It’s generous enough that we’re not asking for $50,000. After raising you all these years, you can’t even give us this $20,000?" she snapped.

"But Mom, you know, Lucas and I are getting married next month. And my brother isn’t just short $20,000 for the down payment. He’s short $20,000 for the entire house!" My heart was breaking as I spoke.

"Why can’t he just get a loan?"

My mother’s voice was sharp, but I felt like my whole world was crumbling.

I had once thought my parents really loved me. Even when they left me in the countryside with my grandmother until I was five and only brought me to the city once my brother was old enough for kindergarten, I had always believed they were just too busy to care for me.

When my friends talked about their families’ favoritism towards boys, I would always insist that my family wasn’t like that. My brother was just an unexpected child, not something deliberately planned by my parents.

I had been living in this lie for over twenty years.

I looked at my parents in disbelief.

My brother was getting married in a year, and my parents were already using all their savings to buy him a house in the best area of the city. They didn’t even want him to take out a loan.

But I was getting married next month, and they hadn’t contributed a penny—now they wanted to take all my savings.

Why was this happening?

"Then you can just take out a loan," my father said from the side.

"What kind of nonsense is that? The woman shouldn’t pay for the house. Look at your brother. His wife isn’t contributing anything. You should talk to Lucas and tell him that we’re not contributing," he added dismissively.

It felt like my heart had been crushed by a weight I couldn’t describe. I couldn’t speak, couldn’t even breathe.

"I’ll think about it," I muttered, needing some time to process the blows.

"No need to think. I’ve already taken the money out. I was just testing you. I didn’t expect you to be such an ungrateful child," my mother said coldly.

"What?"I was stunned.

"What do you mean, ‘what’? I found your card at home, so I just took it out. The password has always been the same, hasn’t it?" my mother said dismissively.

I felt like the world was crashing down around me. I rushed into the room, grabbed my bank card, and ran out of the house, barely putting on a jacket. I headed straight to the bank.

When I saw that the balance was zero, I leaned against the ATM, slowly sliding to the floor.

$20,000. To withdraw it all without alerting the bank would take at least four months.

They had been planning this for a long time.

Growing up, they always told me that we were a family, and in a family, there should be no secrets. That’s why everyone’s passwords were public.

I never imagined they had been setting this up all along.

I had always naively believed that all loving families were like that. I had never coveted their privacy or their money, so I never tried to use their passwords.

But I never expected that one day, they would take everything I had.

In a daze, I picked up my phone and shakily opened my Messenger app, typing in my father's account number.

Times had changed quickly, and they no longer used that app, so I assumed the password hadn’t been changed.

A moment later, I saw the "incorrect password" error message and forced out a bitter smile.

I tried my mother’s and brother’s accounts as well.

None of them worked.

It turned out that all these years, the only one whose password was public was me.