Chapter 7 - The ReckoningTwo weeks later, they found me. Not in person — I’d kept my location quiet — but through a long, rambling email from Mom that landed in my inbox like a storm.
It was all there: how ungrateful I was, how I’d embarrassed them, how Danielle was heartbroken, how Dad couldn’t believe his own daughter would turn her back on them. There was no apology. No mention of the slap. No “are you okay?” Just lists of everything they’d done for me — things I’d never asked for — and demands that I “make this right.”
For a long time, I stared at the screen. Then I typed the only honest response I had:
May you like
“You say I turned my back on you. But for years, you were the ones walking away from me — every time you only saw what I could give, and never who I was. I won’t apologize for protecting myself. I won’t pay for anything else. And I won’t come back until you see me as a daughter, not a wallet.”
I hit send. Then I took a deep breath and waited.
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