The call came on a Tuesday afternoon, right after my last piano lesson of the day. My father’s voice on the other end was clipped and businesslike, stripped of any warmth that might have softened the blow. “Eleanor’s had another heart attack.
She’s stable, but they’re moving her to hospice. Family meeting at the hospital in an hour.”
I dropped everything—the sheet music I’d been organizing, the cup of tea growing cold on my desk, the plans I’d had for a quiet evening. By the time I arrived at the hospital, my parents and my sister Megan were already huddled in a corner of the waiting room, speaking in the kind of low voices that suggested I wasn’t meant to hear what they were discussing.
My father, Richard Thompson, stood with his arms crossed in that stance I’d known my whole life—the posture of a man who had already made all the decisions and was simply waiting for everyone else to fall in line. My mother, Diane, clutched her designer purse like a talisman. And Megan, four years younger and perpetually favored, scrolled through her phone with the casual indifference of someone who’d never had to fight for attention.
“Good, you’re here,” my father said when he noticed me. Not “How are you holding up?” or “This must be hard for you.” Just the stark efficiency of task delegation. “We need to divide responsibilities.
Someone needs to visit Mother daily. Diane and I have the business to run, and Megan’s in a critical phase with Daniel’s family.”
Daniel Harrison—Megan’s boyfriend of eight months, son of my father’s most important business partner, and apparently the axis around which all family decisions now rotated. “So, Annabelle.” My father looked at me the way someone might look at a particularly useful piece of furniture.
“You’ll handle the visits. Your schedule is flexible. Teachers don’t exactly work overtime.”
I wanted to say that I taught music to thirty-seven children every week, that I ran after-school programs, that my time had value too.
But I’d learned long ago that defending myself only made things worse. The family had cast me in the role of the accommodating one, the invisible daughter who asked for nothing and received less, and breaking character never ended well. “Of course,” I said quietly.
The story doesn’t end here –
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