Chapter Eight: Back to Reality

The cream Chanel dress felt like a cage, each perfectly tailored seam a reminder of how thoroughly I'd been measured, assessed, and packaged for someone else's consumption.

I stood in my childhood bedroom—the one with the soft pink walls I'd never chosen and the white furniture I'd never wanted—and stared at my reflection in the antique mirror my mother had selected when I was twelve. The woman looking back at me was a stranger wearing my face: hair pinned in the style my mother preferred, makeup applied to emphasize demure femininity, posture perfect after years of deportment training.

But underneath the polish and propriety, E still existed—and she was screaming.

"Evelyn!" My mother's voice carried up the stairs with the sharp edge it always held when she was displeased. "Richard is leaving. Come say goodbye properly."

Properly. The word that had defined my entire existence. Sit properly. Speak properly. Smile properly. Exist properly within the narrow confines of other people's exp