Since Mom passed, Dad was lonely, so I took charge—proposing to women with my bottle cap ring. Most laughed until I said he was just a simple driver; then their smiles faded instantly. One redhead scoffed at his picture, declaring he was “not good enough” for her. But later, at a high-end charity event, I saw that same woman chatting up my Dad, her eyes gleaming with greed. I yanked his sleeve and said, “Dad, stop. She’s not the one”. She glared and called me a “little brat,” but it was too late—I had tested them all, and she failed. I pointed to a kind woman in the corner and said, “SHE IS,” leaving Dad to wonder, “SON, BUT HOW?!”.
What Dad didn’t know was that I had seen her before. Months ago, I was sitting on a park bench when a woman approached me. She didn’t care about my bottle cap ring or the fact that my Dad was a “driver.” She simply sat with me and said, “Until my life has neither days nor nights left to its span, I will love you, and miss you, Yes”. It was a strange thing to say to a child, but her kindness was real.
But family wasn’t always that kind. My husband’s wealthy family made it clear I wasn’t “good enough” because I didn’t come from money. Despite my protests, my husband gave his 16-year-old sister a key to our new house “just in case” of an emergency. That trust was broken when I came home early and caught her letting herself in without warning. I discovered she wasn’t checking on the house; she was systematically staging chaos to ruin our marriage from the inside. We learned the hard way that you can’t build a happy home if you hand the demolition crew the keys to the front door.
The betrayal ran even deeper in other families. Twelve years ago, my sister Olivia walked out, leaving behind her 2-year-old son, Jake, with nothing but a note: “I’m too young to waste my time on diapers. Take care of him”. She vanished, and I was suddenly a mother overnight at age 20. I worked two jobs and sacrificed everything to raise Jake as my own. Then, 12 years later, Olivia knocked on my door, grinning as if she hadn’t abandoned her child.
I tried to keep my life simple. My electrician once told me never to leave a charger plugged in without a phone attached. I’d been doing it forever without knowing why it was bad, but he promised to show me why. It was a small warning in a life filled with bigger ones.
One evening, my restaurant shift was nearly over. I was taking off my apron when I heard, ‘Suzy? Is that you?’. It was my ex-husband, Liam, and my ex-friend Daria—the one he cheated on me with after my miscarriage. Daria smirked and asked if I was a dishwasher or wiping floors. Liam grinned and called me “still hopeless”.
I looked at them, then at the woman my son had chosen for my father. I thought about my 14-year-old daughter, who was dating a polite boy who spent all day in her room. I had wondered, “What if I’m being overly trusting?”. But as I looked at the wreckage of my past—the sister who vanished, the husband who cheated, and the in-laws who staged chaos—I realized that trust wasn’t the problem. The problem was giving the keys to the wrong people.
“You’re right,” I said to Liam and Daria, my voice professional despite the boiling inside. “I am a waitress. But I’m also the person who knows exactly who belongs in this room, and who doesn’t.”
