At my grandfather’s funeral, my cousins received his yacht, his penthouse, and his company worth 27 million dollars. I received a small, old envelope. Laughter broke out as I opened it. Inside there was only a plane ticket to Rome – INFO DESK

And the funeral wasn’t just about saying goodbye to him.

It was the day I found out that sometimes the smallest gift carries the heaviest secret—and that the people laughing at you might be standing on a floor that’s already cracking beneath their feet.

I didn’t grow up poor, not exactly. I grew up somewhere in the gray space between “fine” and “barely,” which is a strange place to land when your last name belongs on glass towers and port warehouses.

My alarm went off at 5:30 a.m. every weekday—same as it had for six years—buzzing on the nightstand of my one–bedroom apartment on the east side of Detroit. Above my bed, the ceiling had a water stain that looked like the state of Texas if you squinted hard enough. I used to joke that if it ever started looking like California, I’d finally move.

My neighbor’s dog barked like clockwork at the same time every morning. Mrs. Chen did her exercises in the next apartment over, the muffled thump of her feet and the creak of worn floorboards seeping through the paper–thin walls.

This was my life. Predictable. Honest. Modest.

And completely different from the world I’d been born into.

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