Although I was the second child in the family, my mother loved me the most.

When Dad bought my sister a new dress, she stayed up late knitting a sweater for me.

When Grandma took my younger brother out for burgers, she baked me a homemade sponge cake.

Until the New Year’s Eve dinner.

Dad placed the big chicken drumstick onto my sister’s plate.

Grandma immediately stuffed the other one into my brother’s.

My mother hurriedly picked the chicken wing from her plate and placed it onto mine, smiling as she said, “I saved this especially for you.”

The relatives laughed and teased, “Your family really has a clear division of love. Everyone spoils a different child. What a loving family.”

The next second, I suddenly flipped the table.

Under everyone’s stunned gaze, I grabbed that chicken wing and shoved it straight into my mother’s mouth.

The moment I flipped the table, the cheerful laughter in the room died instantly.

Plates and bowls crashed onto the floor, soup and grease splattering everywhere.

Everyone—my dad, grandma, sister, brother, and a whole table of relatives—stared at me in shock.

My mother was the first to react.

She spat the chicken wing out, gagging as she repeatedly spit and wiped her mouth hard with the back of her hand, as if she had just swallowed poison.

Standing in the middle of the mess, I watched her reaction and suddenly felt like laughing.

So, she knew it was dirty after all.

“Emily Carter! Have you lost your mind?!”

My dad slammed the table and roared. “What the hell are you doing on New Year’s Eve? You have no respect at all!”

His face was flushed red, his finger almost poking my nose.

“Emily, you’ve gone too far.”

My sister, Olivia Carter, set down her fork, her brows tightly knit, her voice full of disdain.

“This was supposed to be a nice holiday dinner. Look at the mess you’ve made. Isn’t Mom already good enough to you?”

“Exactly, Emily. What’s gotten into you?”

My aunt, Linda, hurried over and patted my mother on the back while glaring at me with accusation in her eyes.

“Apologize to your mother right now! Look how frightened she is. Out of everyone in this family, your mother loves you the most. How could you hurt her like this?”

“This child is getting more and more unreasonable as she grows up. Your mother has had such a hard life…”

My other aunt, Carol, shook her head in agreement, staring at the mess on the floor with a pained expression.

Listening to their words, I kept my eyes fixed on my mother, my calm voice cutting through the noise.

“Loves me?”

I bent down, picked up the chicken wing, and held it as I walked toward my mother, almost pressing it against her face.

“Mom, the chicken wing you gave me—this is the one that just fell on the floor, right? Right beside your chair.”

My mother froze. Her body stiffened suddenly, too guilty to meet my eyes.

“What nonsense are you talking about!”

“I saw it with my own eyes.”

I spoke each word slowly. My voice wasn’t loud, yet the entire room fell silent again.

“You bent down, picked it up from the floor, put it onto your own plate, and after Grandma gave the drumstick to my brother, you passed it to me.”

“Don’t talk nonsense! How could I possibly…” Mom snapped back in a shrill voice.

“Oh, come on. What’s wrong with picking it up if it fell?” Linda immediately tried to smooth things over.

“A little dirt won’t hurt anyone. Emily, you’re being too fussy. Your mom just didn’t want to waste food…”

“Exactly, exactly. It’s such a small thing. Why make such a big scene out of it…” someone else chimed in.

At that moment, my six-year-old brother, who had been hiding behind my mother the whole time, slowly peeked his head out.

He looked at my mother, then at the chicken wing in my hand, and said in an innocent voice.

“When the chicken wing fell on the floor, Mom said it would be a pity to throw it away. She said it was fine to give it to Emily so it wouldn’t go to waste.”

In an instant, everyone’s eyes turned to him.

Linda, who had just been chattering away in defense of my mother, froze with her mouth open, but didn’t speak right away.

Carol frowned, glancing from my mother to me.

Even the blazing fury on my father’s face seemed to cool, as if someone had thrown cold water over it. His momentum weakened.

My mother’s face went completely pale.

She suddenly turned and glared at my brother.

“Henry! What nonsense are you saying? When did I ever say that!”

My six-year-old brother was frightened by the look in her eyes. His little mouth trembled, and he burst into tears, scrambling behind Grandma.

That crying seemed to flip some kind of switch in my mother.

She stopped looking at me and my brother.

Instead, she suddenly covered her face, her shoulders shaking violently as she began to cry. The sound was suppressed and aggrieved, even louder than my brother’s.

“Wah… what kind of sin did I commit…”

She wailed, her voice leaking through the gaps between her fingers.

“I stayed up so many nights just so you could have a new sweater for the holidays. My hands are covered in calluses from knitting it.

“And for a single chicken wing, just a single chicken wing, you treat me like this. Emily, where is your conscience?”

She cried so hard she could barely catch her breath, as if she had suffered a terrible injustice.

I had heard this speech, that familiar crying tone, far too many times.

Every time her “good intentions” were questioned, those tears became her most effective weapon.

Sure enough, my father immediately took her side again.

He wrapped an arm around my mother’s shoulders, looking at her with heartache before turning a furious glare on me.

“Look at her! Look what you’ve done to your mother. That sweater was knitted stitch by stitch by your mom. Her hands were covered in blisters. Do you have any humanity at all?”

“Exactly, Emily.”

Linda immediately seized the new angle, her tone even harsher than before.

“Your mother cares so much about you. She was afraid you’d be cold, afraid you’d freeze, so she wouldn’t even buy herself anything new and stayed up late knitting that sweater for you.

“Can money buy that kind of love? And you’re making a scene over a chicken wing. How can you be so ungrateful!

“Olivia, tell them, how does your mother treat your little sister?” Linda even pulled my sister into it.

Olivia pressed her lips together.

Looking at my mother crying so miserably, she finally spoke, her tone tinged with reproach.

“Mom stayed up several nights knitting that sweater. Her neck problems even flared up because of it. Emily, you really went too far. Mom just spoils you too much.”

The accusations surged in again like a rising tide.

Listening to my mother’s aggrieved sobbing, I let out a cold laugh.

I reached down, grabbed the hem of the cream-colored sweater I was wearing, and yanked it off, tossing it onto the greasy floor.

Under everyone’s stunned gaze, I lifted the edge of the shirt underneath, exposing the skin across my waist and stomach.

“Oh my!”

Some relative let out a short gasp.

Under the bright lights, the skin along my waist and abdomen was covered in dense red rashes.

In some places, the skin had been scratched raw from repeated itching, thin streaks of blood seeping through. It looked shocking.

“I wore this sweater for three days, and the rash got this bad,” I said, pointing at the lump of yarn on the floor, my voice cold as ice.

My mother’s crying stopped abruptly.

She lowered her hands, her face filled with shock and guilt.

“Your skin being sensitive isn’t my fault!” she snapped, her voice sharp with anger at being exposed.

“I was only trying to be nice…”

I pulled my phone out of my jeans pocket, my fingers swiping quickly across the screen.

“Using yarn unraveled from Olivia’s old sweater, without even washing it first, and knitting it for me to wear. That’s your idea of being nice?”

I opened a video and turned the screen toward the nearest person, Linda.

In the video, my mother was pulling apart a pink old sweater, muttering to herself:

“Olivia only wore this sweater for one season and already doesn’t want it. Such a waste… fine, I’ll unravel it and knit one for Emily.

“She won’t know the difference anyway. She’ll wear whatever I give her…”

Linda’s face darkened the moment she saw the video.

Before she could say anything, I swiped to the next image. It was a screenshot of a pharmacy receipt, an ordinary anti-allergy cream that cost five dollars.

“When my allergy got bad, I went and bought medicine myself. Do you remember what you told Dad at the time?”

I swiped to the next screenshot. It was a chat record between my mother and father.

“Why buy her medicine? She’s just being dramatic. She’ll get over it if she toughs it out.”

“You unraveled an old sweater and knitted it for me without even washing the yarn. I broke out in rashes from the allergy, and when I wanted medicine, you said it was too expensive and called me dramatic.”

My gaze shifted to my brother, who was still sniffling.

“But what about Henry? Last time he said his face felt a little dry, and the very next day you bought him that bottle of baby cream for sixty dollars. Right?”

My brother seemed to remember the sweet-smelling cream and nodded instinctively.

My mother immediately shot him a fierce glare, frightening him into shrinking his neck.

“Sarah!”

Linda finally couldn’t hold back any longer. She pointed at the chat record on the phone screen.

“Th-this is really what you said? It’s one thing to give the child old yarn to wear, but you wouldn’t even buy her medicine?”

My mother’s face had turned deathly pale, yet she couldn’t force out a single word.

All the relatives in the room stared at her, the doubt and shock in their eyes impossible to hide.

“Alright, alright!”

In the suffocating silence, Grandma let out a heavy sigh and tapped her cane hard against the floor.

A forced smile spread across her face as she tried to change the subject.

“It’s just a sweater. We’re all family. These little things with needles and yarn, let it go. It’s the holidays. Don’t argue anymore.”

She turned to me, her tone soft with a kind of peacekeeping persuasion.

“Emily, your mother may have been wrong, but you can’t forget the good she’s done for you either.

“For example, you loved those sponge cakes she makes since you were little, haven’t you? Just yesterday she made a whole tray for you.”

That remark seemed to remind my mother of something.

She practically sprang up from her chair, nodding repeatedly, her voice hurried and almost exaggerated.

“Yes, yes! The sponge cake! I made it especially for you yesterday! I added so much sugar because I know you like sweet things. You’re the one I care about the most…”

“Sponge cake?”

I cut her off, the corner of my mouth curling into a cold smile.

I turned and walked straight to the refrigerator in the corner of the kitchen, taking out a plate covered with plastic wrap.

I carried it back to the messy dining table and set it down heavily.

Frost had formed on the plastic wrap.

I picked up the only fork on the table that still looked relatively clean and jabbed them into the cake, then pulled hard to the sides.

What appeared inside wasn’t the soft, golden crumb of a fresh sponge cake, but a dull, grayish yellow instead.

A faint, stale oily smell drifted out, mixed with the cold chill of frost.

“When you made this yesterday, I saw this at the very bottom of the kitchen trash can,” I said, setting the fork down and looking straight at my mother.

From a nearby cabinet, I pulled out a crumpled egg carton. A bright clearance sticker was slapped across it, with the production date and expiration date printed clearly on the label.