Chapter 4

A month passed. The silence was blissful. I poured myself into my work, earning a promotion and a significant raise. For the first time, my income was truly my own. I started saving for a down payment on a condo, a place that would belong to me and me alone.

Then, the inevitable happened. An email from my mother appeared in my inbox. They had found a new way to reach me.

The subject line was simply: "Urgent."

The email was a long, rambling tirade. It accused me of being cruel and heartless. It detailed their financial struggles. The mortgage payment was late. The utility bills were piling up.

"Your brother is trying his best," she wrote. "But the business is slow. It' s not his fault. You' ve abandoned us in our time of need. How can you sleep at night knowing your own parents might be thrown out on the street?"

The emotional blackmail was so transparent it was almost laughable.

I typed a short, simple reply.

"As I stated, I am no longer financially responsible for you. Mike is the heir. The business and the house are his. Therefore, the bills are also his. This is what you wanted."

I attached a screenshot of the email I had sent before changing my number, highlighting the sentence where I declared I was done. Then I hit send and blocked her email address.

Of course, they didn' t stop. They moved their campaign to a more public stage. They started a social media page, a "community support" page for the Miller family. There, they posted carefully curated photos of themselves looking worried and sad. They wrote long posts about their "ungrateful daughter" who had abandoned her "ailing parents."

The posts were filled with lies. They claimed I had stolen money from them before I left, that I was living a life of luxury while they starved.

Mike played his part to perfection. He posted pictures of himself at the hardware store, leaning on a broom with a tired expression, trying to look like a hardworking son struggling to keep the family afloat.

"Doing my best to take care of Mom and Dad," he' d write in the caption. "It' s hard when you' re all alone."

The local online community, at first, was sympathetic. People who didn't know the full story sent messages of support and criticized the anonymous "terrible daughter."

But reality had a way of seeping through the cracks. While Mike was posting photos of himself looking downtrodden, people in town saw a different story. They saw him leaving the store in the middle of the day to go to the bar. They saw him showing off a new, expensive watch. They heard him bragging about how he was the boss now and didn't have to listen to anyone.

Mr. Henderson, my bakery-owning ally, told me about it on one of our infrequent but welcome phone calls.

"He' s a fool, Sarah," he said, his voice full of scorn. "He got a big commercial loan against the business, using the deed your father gave him. He told everyone he was going to 'modernize.' Instead, he bought a sports car. Your mother walks to the grocery store now because Mike says he needs the 'company vehicle' for 'important meetings.' "

The news was both infuriating and validating. They were getting exactly what they deserved.

Without my monthly infusions of cash, their lifestyle quickly deteriorated. The house, which was already showing its age, began to fall into disrepair. My mother complained to neighbors that the water heater was broken and they couldn't afford to fix it. Yet, the next day, Mike would be seen buying a round of drinks for his friends at the pub.

The tension in the house escalated. Neighbors heard them shouting at each other through the thin walls. My mother screaming at Mike for wasting money. My father yelling at both of them. It was the predictable outcome of a family built on a foundation of entitlement and exploitation. Once the source of free money was gone, they turned on each other. They were stewing in the toxic mess they had created, and I was miles away, breathing clean air.