My daughter said the real number, and my sister’s face changed immediately. She looked at me and asked why I had lied to her for so many years. Before I could answer, my daughter told her that I had been lowering prices because every time my aunt asked what something cost, the entire room became uncomfortable. My sister said she had only ever been curious, but my daughter shook her head and said that wasn’t how curiosity looked. She said curiosity didn’t make someone feel ashamed of things they had worked hard to afford.
My sister became defensive and said she didn’t understand why everyone was suddenly attacking her. My daughter told her nobody was attacking her; they were simply answering the question she had been asking for years. Then she explained that she had watched me deliberately give smaller numbers whenever my sister visited. She said she had once asked me why, and I had told her that sometimes peace was cheaper than honesty. My sister looked at me and whispered that she had never realized I was doing that because of her.
I told her that I wasn’t angry about the questions themselves. I was tired of watching her turn every answer into a comparison. She always asked what something cost, then went quiet as though the number had proven something about me. My sister said our parents had taught us that money showed what kind of person you were. I told her that lesson had made her spend thirty years keeping score against someone who wasn’t even competing with her. For the first time, she didn’t have an immediate response.
Later, she came to me privately and asked what I had actually paid for my house. I laughed and told her I wasn’t giving her a number this time. She smiled awkwardly and said she supposed she had earned that answer. I told her that I would rather talk about what we had both done with our lives than compare the prices of what we owned. She admitted she had spent years assuming I was judging her whenever I bought something she couldn’t afford. I told her I had never been judging her; I had been lying to protect her feelings. And that was the moment we both realized how strange it was that two sisters had spent a decade hiding numbers from each other instead of simply talking.
