At least we did when my mother and sister weren’t tearing me in half. For years, every single weekend, I was dragged—not invited—to my mother’s house. I cooked, cleaned, ran errands, and basically lived as an unpaid maid.
My sister Rachel, who had two wild toddlers, expected Lily to babysit them every visit. An eight-year-old forced to look after two screaming three-year-olds while adults sat around? But my mother Barbara called it “teaching responsibility.” It was abuse disguised as tradition.
I met David, a pediatric surgeon whose kindness felt like a warm blanket after years of cold. He loved Lily as though she were his own child. For once, life seemed possible again.
Lily adored him, too; one night, she whispered, “I want David to be my daddy.”
We planned to marry in three months. David had been horrified when he heard how my mother treated Lily. “Emma, that’s exploitation,” he told me, his voice firm.
“We’ll put distance between them once we marry.”
But Barbara didn’t react well when she sensed control slipping from her hands. “You’re abandoning me!” she had screamed over the phone. “After everything I’ve given you?”
Everything she had given me?
The story doesn’t end here — it continues on the next page.
Tap READ MORE to discover the rest 🔎👇
