The email notification glowed on my phone screen like a warning flare. Subject line: “Family reunion.” Sender: Walter—my father, a man who hadn’t spoken to me in six years. I stood on the balcony of my Portland estate, raindrops pelting the glass railing as I read his message with trembling hands.
“Valyria, we heard about your success.
We are so proud. We are flying to Portland to see you.
We need to talk about the future. Love, Dad and Mom.”
The audacity nearly knocked the breath from my lungs.
They were proud.
They wanted to talk about the future. As if the past six years of absolute silence had never happened. As if I hadn’t stood on their Memphis doorstep in a downpour, homeless and heartbroken, while they locked the deadbolt and turned off the lights.
I should have been celebrating.
I had just closed the biggest deal of my career, securing my tech company’s future for the next decade. Instead, I was spiraling back to that night—the night my family chose my older sister Sienna’s comfort over my existence, the night they handed me two hundred dollars and a suitcase and told me my presence made my sister physically ill.
My phone buzzed again. This time it was Uncle Clark, my father’s brother and the only family member who had shown me genuine kindness when I needed it most.
“Did you get the email?” His gruff voice was edged with concern.
“Yeah,” I managed. “You don’t have to let them in, Belle. You can call the police if they show up.”
But something had shifted inside me.
Maybe it was time.
Maybe it was finally time for them to see exactly what they had thrown away when they chose Sienna’s manufactured hysteria over their younger daughter’s future. “I’m going to let them come,” I told Clark.
“They need to see this.”
To understand why a simple email could resurrect such visceral pain, you need to understand what happened six years ago. You need to know that I wasn’t a troubled kid.
I didn’t do drugs, didn’t steal, didn’t rebel.
I was a nineteen-year-old computer science student working part-time at a diner, saving money for college, spending my free time coding in my small bedroom. But in my family, there was only one rule that mattered: keep Sienna happy. And six years ago, Sienna decided that my very existence was preventing her from achieving happiness.
The story doesn’t end here –
it continues on the next page.
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