The Fall
Then came the panic. My parents took out loans to cover the shortfall, assuming I’d step in. They stretched themselves thin, waiting for my rescue. But I never came. Without me, the cracks widened — foreclosure notices, calls from creditors. The house they once ruled from slipped through their fingers.
Emma moved back into their basement, bitter and restless. My parents scrambled, drowning in the mess they’d created. And I thrived. Three months later, they found me — standing outside my new apartment, the one they never thought I could afford without them. They looked older, smaller, bound by fear.
“Why?” my mother asked, her voice trembling. “Why would you do this to us?”
I looked at them calmly, like a surgeon before the first incision. “Because you never asked — you demanded. Because you never saw me as family, only as a solution. And because I finally realized — I owe you nothing.”
