The Fifth Place Setting

1 The arrangement started during our freshman year at Michigan, right after Natalie Ross decided the four of us couldn't be trusted with our own money. She pitched it like a favor. College was expensive, dining halls were overpriced, and we were fresh out of high school with checking accounts funded by our parents. Brett, my boyfriend since senior year of high school, was the first to hand over his card. My older brother, Lucas, set up an automatic weekly Venmo transfer to her account by that evening, and Owen, who had lived across the street from us since we were in diapers, fell in line before the weekend was out. Natalie became our personal bursar. Every Sunday, she disbursed our weekly living allowances from the pooled account. Whenever Lucas wanted a new pair of limited-edition Dunks, Natalie wired him an extra hundred and twenty dollars without flinching. When Owen had a rush mixer for his business fraternity, she texted him first to ask if his dinner stipend was enough. When Brett made last-minute plans to grab drinks with his project group, she transferred the cash before he even had time to explain where he was going. Then came the Tuesday afternoon my student ID declined at the campus dining hall. I was standing at the register with a dry chicken sandwich and an apple. The screen flashed red. Insufficient funds. The girl behind me in line huffed, shifting her backpack. I pulled up my banking app—fourteen dollars left to my name. Natalie was holding the remaining two weeks of my monthly allowance. I sent her a quick message asking if she could advance me twenty dollars just to cover lunch and groceries for the rest of the week. Ten minutes later, a screenshot of my transaction history dropped into our five-person group chat. Nora, you’ve been burning through cash pretty fast lately, Natalie texted, followed by a grimacing emoji. I’m just trying to keep us on budget. Lucas replied almost immediately: Just stretch what you have for two days, Nora. Don’t be dramatic. Owen chipped in next: She’s right, Nora. You’ve gotta learn to manage your burn rate. Brett chimed in last, having evidently reviewed Natalie's itemized spreadsheet: Natalie spends hours balancing these accounts for us every single week. She’s only looking out for you. That same evening, the four of them went out for Korean barbecue across from South University Avenue. Natalie had advanced the table sixty dollars from the group reserve. They were halfway through their meal before Brett finally texted me. Where are you? Why aren't you here? I sat on the edge of my unmade twin-XL mattress in the dorm, staring at the blue bubble on my screen, and felt a quiet, terrible laugh bubble up in my throat. Four chairs. Four sets of chopsticks. Four glasses of water. They hadn't noticed I wasn't there until the grill was already smoking. If they could lose track of my absence that easily, they didn't need me. And I certainly didn't need them. From now on, my money was mine. And the four of them were done. I flipped my phone face down on my desk, took a slow breath, and opened Natalie’s private chat. Transfer the rest of my allowance back to my account, I typed. I’m managing my own money from here on out. The text sat on Delivered. Ten minutes passed. An hour. It wasn't until nearly midnight, when the room was dark and my stomach was cramping with hunger, that the group chat chimed. My stomach is killing me, Natalie wrote. Note to self: never order extra kimchi when you’re stressed. Lucas replied within seconds: Did you take any Pepto? Do you need Tums? Owen dropped a screenshot of a 24-hour Walgreens on State Street: They’re open. I can bike over right now. Brett started a group audio call. Natalie typed that she was fine, that they were all so sweet and should just go to sleep, but the three of them hovered over her in the chat for another forty minutes, debating brands of antacids. My private message to her stayed untouched at the bottom of her inbox. The next morning, my phone vibrated repeatedly against the nightstand. Lucas had already picked up medicine from the pharmacy before his eight-a.m. lecture. Owen was asking if she wanted an iced matcha or warm oatmeal. Brett texted that he was parked outside her sorority house with breakfast. I washed my face, pulled on a sweater, and walked downstairs to head to class. I ran into Brett right outside the lobby doors. He was holding two brown paper bags from the bakery down the street. A cup of warm oatmeal, a cheese Danish, an egg-and-bacon bagel, and a hot vanilla latte. Everything Natalie ordered when she felt fragile. Brett stopped when he saw me, adjusting his grip on the bags. "Nora. Headed to class?" I adjusted my backpack strap. "Yeah." He glanced toward the elevators behind me, his brows pulling together. "Did you text Natalie last night demanding your money?" "I asked for what's mine," I said evenly. He sighed, shifting the weight of the bags to his other hand, looking at me with that tired, exasperated disappointment he’d started wearing like a second skin. "She was up all night violently sick, Nora, and you're hounding her about spreadsheets? Couldn't it have waited forty-eight hours?" The fire that had been smoldering behind my ribs flared white-hot. "I didn't eat dinner yesterday, Brett. My card declined at the register." Brett blinked, caught off guard. Before he could speak, his phone trilled in his jacket pocket. Natalie’s name flashed across the screen. He answered immediately, turning half a shoulder away from me. "Hey. Yeah, I’m downstairs. Don’t come down, it’s freezing out, I’ll bring it up to the lobby." He hung up and gave me a hurried, distracted look. "We'll talk about this tonight, okay? I need to get this upstairs before it gets cold." He took three steps toward the doors, then turned back, almost as an afterthought. "Get yourself something to eat, alright?" I stood frozen on the concrete, watching the double doors slide shut behind him. During our junior year of high school, when I came down with influenza and couldn't keep water down, Brett had snuck out past his curfew, jumped our back fence in twenty-degree weather, and carried a thermos of chicken broth inside his down jacket so it wouldn't lose heat. His chest had been blistered and red from the scalding metal by the time he reached my window. That night, Lucas had sworn at him for being a dramatic idiot, but ten minutes later, Lucas had quietly brought his heaviest fleece blanket from his room and tucked it around my shivering feet. Back then, they were always teasing me about how tough I was. Nora’s resilient, they’d say. Nora can weather anything. I had laughed along with them. I had believed them. I pulled my scarf tighter against the wind and walked to the humanities quad alone. At noon, Lucas sent a photo to the group chat. Natalie was slumped over a wooden desk in the library, Lucas’s gray Carhartt jacket draped across her shoulders like a quilt. On the desk beside her sat a blister pack of medicine and an empty bakery cup. Lucas captioned it: Nobody let her near the dining hall grease today. I didn't reply. I tapped the info icon and left the group. At four in the afternoon, Natalie finally replied to my private text. Nora, all our money is pooled in the high-yield savings vault to earn interest for our trips, she wrote. I have to reconcile everyone’s withdrawals manually so the math doesn't get messed up. Can I send it to you tonight? Pretty please? 🥺 I was typing a response when my screen went black, replaced by an incoming call from Lucas. I picked up. He didn't even say hello. "Do you seriously have to do this today?" His voice was rough with irritation. I stopped on the landing of the stairwell. "Lucas, do I need to submit an application to get my own money back?" There was a beat of silence on the other end, followed by the faint, tremulous murmur of Natalie’s voice in the background: Lucas, please, it's fine... Lucas’s tone hardened. "She’s managed our accounts for nearly two years without charging us a single cent. Has she ever shorted you a dime? The second you start breathing down her neck, she sits there stressing over bank statements instead of resting. She hasn't even eaten lunch." My fingers tightened around the aluminum edges of my phone. "Then tell her to give me the ledger. If she can't handle the basic math, I’ll do it myself." "Nora, why are you being so—" I ended the call before he could finish the sentence. Back in my room, the money still hadn't arrived. I pulled up my laptop at my desk, opened my bank portal, and began pulling every single transaction statement from the past sixty days. In the beginning, I had trusted her completely. Whatever Natalie Venmoed me each week was what I spent. We all took what she gave us, and I had never bothered to audit a girl who had sat at our kitchen table every Sunday since we were kids. When I reached the previous week's records, my trackpad froze. In the monthly spreadsheet Natalie had pinned to our group drive, the entry read: Nora Davis: Weekly living stipend — $150.00. I pulled up my Venmo receipt for that exact date. The deposit was eighty dollars. My chest tightened. I took a screenshot, saved it to a folder on my desktop, and went back another week. Nora Davis: Weekly living stipend — $150.00. Venmo receipt: $95.00. I kept scrolling. Week after week, month after month. The ledger never matched the bank receipts. Not once. I spent four hours compiling every discrepancy, cropping thirty-two separate screenshots, and saving them into a single PDF. The next day at noon, I waited by the entrance of the student union until I saw Natalie coming down the steps. When she saw me standing there, the practiced, gentle smile on her face faltered. "Nora. Did you... did you really spend yesterday auditing me?" I held my phone out, tapping the screen to bring up the side-by-side comparisons. "Look at it." She didn't reach for the phone. "What is this?" "Every week, you withheld money from my transfers," I said, my voice dangerously level. "Once or twice could be an honest bookkeeping mistake. But it’s every single week, Natalie. You were shorting me fifty to seventy dollars every time." Natalie looked down at the screen, her eyes darting across the numbers, her expression growing tighter with every passing second. "This... this was probably from when we split that grocery run at Trader Joe's." She swiped to the next image. "And this one... I don't remember off the top of my head. We bought decorations for the tailgate, didn't we?" I pulled the phone back from her hand. "Don't strain yourself trying to invent reasons. Just transfer whatever’s left of my money." Color drained from her face, leaving her lips bloodless. "The way you’re talking... it sounds like you think I’m stealing from you." "What's going on here?" Lucas's voice cut through the midday noise of the plaza. He walked up quickly, taking in Natalie’s brimming eyes and pale face, his posture instantly bristling with protective instinct. "What happened?" he demanded. Natalie shook her head, turning her face toward his shoulder. "Nothing. It’s fine." Lucas’s glare snapped toward me, landing heavily on my phone. "Are you seriously out here interrogating her over receipts in the middle of campus?" I flipped the screen toward him. "I wouldn't have to if the numbers added up. Look at the ledger versus the transfers, Lucas. Look at it." He didn't even look. He reached out and shoved my hand down, forcing the screen away. "It’s a discrepancy of fifty bucks here and there! People make bookkeeping errors, Nora! Since when did you become so damn petty over pocket change?" The air left my lungs in a sharp, painful rush. "Petty? It’s my money, Lucas. Mom worked overtime shifts to send that money to me." "Do you hear how bitter you sound?" Lucas stepped between us, shielding Natalie completely. "Natalie balances the finances for four people every day while carrying a full course load. She skips meals trying to keep our budgets afloat, and you’re standing here treating her like a criminal on trial." Students passing by on their way to the dining hall began turning their heads. Natalie reached out, her fingers curling into the sleeve of Lucas's jacket. "Lucas, please don't yell at her. It’s my fault for not keeping better notes." Hearing her call him by his name with that trembling, reverent softness only made Lucas angrier. "She’s spoiled rotten," he said, loud enough for three girls at an outdoor table to hear. "Mom and Dad gave her everything she ever asked for, and now she can’t even handle a friend doing her a favor without looking for a reason to pick a fight." My fingernails dug into the meat of my palms until they hurt. I remembered my freshman year of high school, the first week I went away to band camp. Lucas had been so worried I wouldn't eat the cafeteria food that he had stuffed an entire duffel bag with granola bars, beef jerky, and dried fruit. When he dropped me off, he had cornered my bunkmates with an awkward, stern look: She won't admit when she's hungry. Make sure she eats. Back then, he couldn't bear the thought of me going without. Now, I had gone an entire day without a hot meal, and he looked at me like I was something disgusting stuck to the bottom of his shoe. Brett and Owen arrived a minute later, cutting across the lawn. Brett caught the tail end of the scene and immediately grabbed my elbow, trying to steer me toward the side of the building. "Nora, stop. Look around. Everyone’s staring." I ripped my arm out of his grasp. "My allowance is missing, Brett. Am I not allowed to ask where it went?" Brett’s face darkened, his jaw shifting. "Nobody said you can't ask. But look at how you're acting! Can't you speak to her like a human being?" He glanced at Natalie, whose shoulders were shaking with quiet, silent sobs. "She’s managed our money for two years out of the goodness of her heart. She’s never taken a dime for her trouble. You standing here screaming that she’s shorting you—how do you think that feels to her?" Owen took my phone from my hand, his face set in a serious, uncomfortable line. He skimmed through the PDF I had built, his eyes flickering over the dates. When he finally spoke, his voice was measured, but cautious. "There are definitely some gaps here that don't line up with the ledger." I looked up at him, a flicker of hope catching in my throat. Then Owen added: "But Nora, this didn't need to turn into a circus. We've known Natalie since middle school. Jumping straight to malice... it’s really unfair to her. You've had this chip on your shoulder lately." I stared at him. "It’s my money that's gone, Owen." Owen pressed his lips together, sighing through his nose. "You’ve just been really aggressive lately, that’s all I’m saying." The blood rushed behind my ears, a high, piercing whine. I pointed a shaking finger at Natalie. "Fine. You guys love her bookkeeping so much? Let her manage your money until you’re broke. But I want what belongs to me. Right now." Natalie let out a choked sob. She pulled out her phone, her thumbs trembling over the screen. A moment later, my phone pinged. A Venmo transfer for one hundred dollars. "Nora, I’m advancing you this week’s grocery stipend," Natalie whispered, her cheeks wet with tears. "Just because I asked you to be patient before doesn't mean I’m keeping your money. Take it. But please... try to learn how to stick to a budget." Lucas let out a long breath, looking like a judge who had finally settled a nuisance case. He reached over and patted Natalie’s shoulder gently. "Don't cry. It’s over." Then he looked at me, his eyes hard and cold. "You got your money. Now drop it." A laugh nearly ripped out of my throat. A hundred dollars. A pathetic fraction of what was missing, tossed at my feet like a bone to a stray dog, and in their eyes, the debt was cleared and I was supposed to be grateful. A dozen students had stopped on the path to watch. Natalie stood with her head bowed, dabbing at her eyes with a tissue Lucas had pulled from his bag. Lucas stood in front of her like an oak tree, and Brett was glaring at me with open disgust. To anyone walking by, I was the vicious, unhinged bully tearing apart an innocent girl. I wanted to scream. I wanted to throw my phone at the pavement. But looking at the circle of their faces—my brother, my boyfriend, my childhood friend—I knew that every word out of my mouth would only be twisted into further proof of my cruelty. I turned around and walked away without saying another word. That night, the campus group chats were buzzing. Natalie had won a competitive undergraduate research grant from the department. To celebrate, Lucas, Brett, and Owen took her out to an upscale Italian bistro on Main Street. Lucas posted a photo of the long table covered in plates of truffle pasta and calamari. Owen commented underneath that the tiramisu was already melting. Brett posted a candid shot of Natalie laughing, wearing a cardboard birthday crown someone had grabbed from a party store. It wasn't until nearly ten that Lucas finally dropped a message in their secondary group chat: Where’s Nora? Brett replied almost immediately: I thought you texted her. Owen: She was in a foul mood today. She wouldn't have come anyway. Natalie waited a few minutes before chiming in: I was worried she’d be uncomfortable seeing me, so I didn't want to make things awkward by inviting her... Lucas responded instantly: Stop blaming yourself for her bad attitude. I read through the messages on my laptop screen. My fingers hovered over the keyboard. I had typed out: Did a single one of you actually ask me? I stared at the words for three seconds, then hit backspace until the box was empty. Then I clicked on the updated spreadsheet Natalie had uploaded to the shared folder an hour ago, detailing the day’s shared expenses. I scrolled down to the bottom line: Group Celebration Dinner: 175.00(175.00( 35.00 per person / 5 people). I pulled up the photo Brett had posted. Four plates. Four water glasses. Four cloth napkins. Four chairs. And yet, thirty-five dollars had been deducted from my balance to pay for their dinner. I was reaching for my phone to call Lucas when it began ringing in my palm. It was my mother. "Hi, honey," Mom said, her voice warm, backgrounded by the hum of the television in our family living room back home. "Just checking in. Did that extra three hundred dollars I sent you last week help with your textbooks?" My hand froze over my notebook. Mom kept talking: "I wired it directly to Natalie’s account, like she suggested. She told me you’ve been struggling to keep track of your discretionary spending lately, and that it’s better not to give you lump sums all at once." I slowly sat up straight in my chair. On my desk, the two-month audit of my accounts was still glaring up at me from the monitor. I looked through every single deposit. That three hundred dollars had never reached me. Not a cent of it. "Mom," I said, my voice barely above a whisper. "Did you hear me, Nora?" "Mom, Natalie never gave me that money." A heavy silence settled over the line. Then came a long, weary sigh. "Nora, what on earth has gotten into you lately?" "I’m telling you the truth—" "Stop it," Mom said, her voice dropping into a tone of stern reprimand. "Natalie called me two days ago. She was in tears, Nora. She told me you've been demanding cash advances every few days because you keep impulse buying online. We've known that girl since she was seven years old. Lucas trusts her with his entire paycheck from the campus gym. Why would she steal from you?" The words caught in my throat like shards of glass. Throughout high school, Mom had been the kind of parent who panicked if I skipped breakfast. If I mentioned that the school lunches were getting greasy, she’d slip an extra twenty into my backpack the next morning, reminding me to buy fruit and fresh sandwiches. Lucas used to steal my phone at the dinner table, laughing: Mom, if you keep spoiling her, she’s never going to survive in the real world. I had never imagined that a day would come when I would have to beg for my own allowance, only to be told I was imagining things. "She’s only trying to help you develop some discipline," Mom continued, her tone softening into that patronizing gentleness that hurts worse than anger. "You’ve always been reckless with your spending. From now on, I’m sending your monthly allowance straight to Natalie. She’ll disburse it as you need it." Tears of pure humiliation burned behind my eyes. "And what if I don't have enough to eat, Mom? What if I starve?" Mom scoffed softly. "Starve? Nora, stop being dramatic just to spite Natalie. It’s unbecoming." I hung up the phone. My hands shook so violently I couldn't unlock my screen for nearly five minutes. The following afternoon, I tracked down Natalie outside the engineering quad. Brett, Lucas, and Owen were all there, leaning against the concrete planter, laughing together under the crisp autumn sun. The moment I walked up, Lucas’s smile vanished. "What do you want now?" I ignored him and looked straight at Natalie. "Give me the three hundred dollars my mother wired you." Natalie’s fingers curled tightly into the hem of her cardigan. "Nora... I already advanced you money yesterday. If I give you everything right now, you won't have anything left for the second half of the month." "That is my money," I said, my voice shaking despite my best efforts to keep it steady. "It came from my mother’s bank account, meant for me. Give it back." Natalie’s eyes welled with tears instantly. "Do you really think... do you honestly believe that every time I don't give you cash on demand, I’m pocketing it for myself?" Lucas took a heavy step forward, his shoulder blocking my view of her. "Nora, that's enough. Mom agreed to this. You don't get to come out here and throw another tantrum because you didn't get your way." Brett put his phone in his pocket and stepped beside Lucas, looking at me with cold disappointment. "If you’re really that desperate for cash, Nora, just ask me. I’ll lend it to you. But stalking Natalie around campus like this? You’re terrifying her." A suffocating pressure clamped down on my chest. "Ask you for a loan? To spend my own mother’s money?" Owen, who had been leaning against the planter with his arms crossed, shook his head. "Nora, you’re crossing a line here. The four of us have done this for two years without a single complaint. Now suddenly you’re the only one who has a problem with it. Have you ever stopped to consider that maybe... just maybe, you're the one who can't budget?" I stood there, looking at the three of them. My brother, who used to check my bike tires before school. My boyfriend, who had once held burning soup against his bare chest for me. My childhood friend, who had taught me how to throw a baseball. Behind them, Natalie was crying quietly, her face hidden behind delicate hands. Lucas reached into his pocket to hand her a fresh tissue. Brett was murmuring soothing words to her, his hand resting lightly on her back. Owen had already looked away from me, his jaw set in stubborn indifference. I didn't say another word. I turned on my heel and walked away. I never asked her for the money again. By the final week of the month, my checking account had two dollars and sixteen cents in it. My campus dining points were at zero. I didn't call Mom. I didn't text Lucas. I walked down toward the commercial district near the hospital and started asking every restaurant on the strip if they were hiring. I found a job as a busser and dishwasher at an Italian-American diner four blocks from campus. The hours were brutal: classes from eight until three, followed by a six-hour evening shift clearing heavy ceramic plates, scraping half-eaten pasta into garbage bins, and hauling gray plastic bus tubs to the dish pit. The upside was the shift meal—one hot plate of rigatoni or a chicken cutlet every night—and fifty to sixty dollars in cash tips. The first three nights, my calves cramped so hard I had to crawl out of bed to use the bathroom. One night, sitting on the floor of my dorm room after a midnight shift, I peeled off my work socks and found the skin on both my heels torn raw and bleeding from the cheap nonslip shoes I’d bought at Walmart. The fabric had dried into the scab, and pulling it off made me gasp from the sharp, stinging pain. Back in high school, if I got a paper cut while studying, Owen would rummage through his backpack for ten minutes until he found a sterile bandage. Brett would roll his eyes, call Owen an overprotective mother hen, and then sneak an antibacterial ointment into my pencil case when I wasn't looking. Now, I came back to the dorm well past midnight every night, limping in the dark, and not a single message sat in my inbox. They were busy accompanying Natalie to sorority formals, group study sessions, and late-night ice cream runs. On a rainy Sunday evening, I pushed through the swinging double doors from the kitchen, balancing a tray loaded with bread baskets and water carafes. I walked into the dining room and stopped dead. Sitting at the large booth near the bay window were four people. Natalie sat in the center, laughing at something on her phone. Lucas was unwrapping her paper-wrapped silverware and laying her napkin across her lap. Brett was refilling her water glass from a pitcher, and Owen was studying the specials board. Lucas looked up first. His eyes locked onto me, taking in the stained black apron tied around my waist, the heavy plastic tray balanced on my forearm, and the rubber-soled shoes on my feet. He stood up so fast his knee slammed into the underside of the table, rattling the glasses. "What the hell are you doing here?" I shifted the tray onto my shoulder, keeping my voice utterly flat. "Working." His face went dark with sudden, furious embarrassment. "Since when does our family need you to bus tables for pocket change?" Natalie looked up, her face draining of color. She scrambled out of the booth, her voice trembling. "Nora... are you doing this because you’re still angry with me?" Brett’s brow furrowed, his expression tightening into that familiar, suffocating irritation. "Didn't I tell you to come to me if you needed money? Running off to wipe down tables in an apron—do you really have to turn everything into a public spectacle?" I looked at Brett. Then at Lucas. Behind me, the shift manager poked his head through the service window. "Nora! Bread service to table twelve, move it!" I pulled my eyes away from them. "Excuse me. You're blocking the aisle." Lucas reached out to grab my forearm, but I pivoted cleanly on my heel, letting his fingers slip through empty air, and carried the tray toward the far side of the dining room. After my shift ended at eleven, I sat on an overturned milk crate by the kitchen’s back alley exit, eating my shift meal of cold penne from a plastic container. The cold rain tapped against the metal awning above me. My phone screen lit up. A text from Mom: I just wired next month’s living allowance to Natalie. Make sure you thank her for keeping things organized. A second later, a notification from Natalie popped up: Nora, please stop acting out like this. Once you demonstrate that you can stick to a budget, I’ll start releasing your allowance normally. I opened the text thread. You better keep every single cent of my money safe, I typed back. Because when the time comes, I’m going to make sure you pay back every single dime. I hit send. And then, without pausing for a single second, I tapped her profile and blocked her number. Blocking Natalie Ross was the best decision I had made all semester. The noise stopped. My world shrank down to a clean, exhausting rhythm: morning lectures, afternoon labs, evening shifts at the diner. Brett waited outside my chemistry building twice, and Lucas called three times, but I walked past Brett without breaking stride and let Lucas’s calls roll straight to voicemail. Whatever they wanted to say, I simply didn't care enough to hear. On Friday night, the diner was slammed. A steady drizzle had driven half the campus indoors, and the waiting area was packed to the doors. The manager waved me over, wiping sweat from his forehead with a bar towel. "Nora, take the front window booths. Tables six through nine. Keep the waters full and get the dessert menus out quick." I grabbed four laminated menus from the hostess stand, pushed through the swinging doors, and froze. Sitting in the curved leather booth at table seven was my mother. Sitting beside her was Lucas, dressed in a clean collared shirt. Opposite them sat Owen and Natalie. A small cardboard box from an expensive bakery in town sat in the middle of the table, half-eaten macarons scattered across a paper doily. They had clearly been sitting there talking for a while. My feet stayed glued to the laminate floor. Behind me, the manager’s voice barked over the hiss of the espresso machine: "Nora! Table seven needs their order taken!" I swallowed the dry lump in my throat, smoothed down the front of my black apron, and walked forward. As I approached the booth, my mother’s voice carried over the ambient chatter, heavy with that familiar, disappointed sigh. "...her temper has just gotten completely out of control," Mom was saying, shaking her head. "She won't even pick up my calls anymore. I don't know where I went wrong with her." Natalie, holding a delicate dessert spoon, spoke up in a soft, conciliatory murmur. "Mrs. Davis, I’m sure Nora’s just feeling overwhelmed with classes. She feels like my budgeting rules are too strict, and I was worried that if I pushed her too hard, it would only make her more resentful." Lucas leaned back against the leather, his arms crossed over his chest. "She’s throwing a tantrum because nobody’s catering to her anymore. Once she realizes nobody’s chasing after her, she’ll come to her senses." Owen turned his water glass in small circles on the tabletop, his tone gentler, but equally dismissing. "Just give her a few days to cool off, Mrs. Davis. The second anyone brings up money, she gets defensive." Mom frowned, tapping her fingers against her purse. "Well, I transferred another four hundred dollars to Natalie’s account on Wednesday. If Nora genuinely needs something for school, buy it for her, Natalie. Don't let her go without just because she’s being stubborn with her family." Natalie nodded quickly, her eyes wide and earnest. "Don't worry, Mrs. Davis. I’ll make sure she’s taken care of." In my hands, the edges of the laminated menus creased under the pressure of my thumbs. Back in high school, whenever I mentioned that the school library was freezing, Mom would order me a heated jacket that very evening. Whenever I casually noted that the campus bakery sold out of blueberry scones too early, she’d send me twenty dollars with a note: Buy the fancy ones from the café down the block. Don't let your brother convince you to scrimp on food. Now, her money was still being spent. It just wasn't being spent on me. I took two steps forward and set the menus down on the wooden tabletop with a crisp, hollow slap. Mom looked up first, a polite, customer-service smile forming on her lips. Then she saw the black apron. She saw the nametag pinned to my chest: NORA.