PARTIALITY

A week before the engagement party, the family gathered for a small dinner to go over the arrangements.

I came straight from work, still in my plain office cardigan, no makeup, hair pulled back.

The moment I walked in, my mother called out: “Anna, get in the kitchen and help me cook — Sophie’s whole family is coming tonight.”

I went, without a word of complaint, the way I’d done for over twenty years.

Lukas sat in the living room showing off his new Swiss watch to his fiancée, voice full of pride: “Bought this with my own money, you know.

Didn’t ask anyone for it.”

I stood in the kitchen, still chopping vegetables, and said nothing.

I knew exactly where that watch — over three thousand euros — had come from: money I’d sent “to help Lukas get ready for the wedding” the month before.

Dinner went on, and I kept ferrying dishes in and out, seated at the far end of the table, barely noticed except when someone needed water poured or a plate cleared.

Sophie’s mother — an elegant, well-spoken woman who worked at a law firm in Frankfurt — asked at one point: “This is Lukas’s sister, is it?”

My mother laughed and answered for me: “Yes, she just works in an office.

Quiet type, doesn’t say much.”

Just works in an office.

Hearing that, on the same day I’d signed off on a merger worth hundreds of millions of euros, I found myself smiling bitterly to myself.

After dinner, as I cleared the plates, Lukas walked past and said, quietly enough for only me to hear: “Guess you’re good for cleaning up, at least.

Suits you.”

I didn’t answer.

I just looked at him for a second, then kept clearing the table.

But that night, driving back to my apartment in Westend, the skyline glittering past the window, I asked myself: how much longer am I going to keep enduring this?