My Brother Said I Was Family But He Never Gave Me a Home Chapter 03
I pretended I hadn’t heard a thing. I opened the door and smiled at them.
“If you need to leave, go ahead. Something came up, so I have to go too.”
Relief flooded their faces.
The room fell silent after they left.
I walked back to my seat at the head of the table and forced myself to eat.
The fried clams were cold and soggy and way too salty.
Didn’t hold a candle to my mom’s chicken alfredo.
At midnight, I left, the other ballroom was still loud and lively.
I wandered back to the apartment alone when my brother Michael called.
“I heard they threw you a party. How was it? Fun?”
I stayed quiet for a long time.
My adoptive father, Robert, took the phone.
“If you didn’t have fun, come home. We sent you back so you could reconnect with your blood relatives, so you could be happier. Not so you could be miserable.”
“That residency thing you were worried about? Uncle Joe already looked into it, we’re handling it. You’re getting into that school.”
I looked at the framed family photo by my bed, the four of us together.
Then I thought about the house I wasn’t allowed to live in.
The only time I was allowed near the Scott family’s things was at the cemetery on anniversaries.
The gold locket our parents had meant for me was still with Sophia, who claimed to miss them too much to part with it.
My chest felt tight, but in a warm, full sort of way. “Then I want chicken alfredo. And garlic butter shrimp scampi. And barbecue ribs with honey glaze.”
A soft sniffle came through the phone. “Done. When you get home, we’ll make you all of it. For the rest of your life.”
After I hung up, someone knocked on the door.
Christopher stood there, eyes slightly red. “I messed up today. I’m sorry you got hurt. I’ve already arranged everything. Tomorrow we’ll do a bigger party, a better one.”
This had happened so many times over the years. I shook my head, my voice calm. “No need. I don’t even know those people.”
He opened his mouth. “They’re our family, our friends. You’d get to know them eventual—”
I laughed. “They’re your family and Sophia’s. Not mine.”
“Three years, and I’ve never met a single one of them.”
His eyes glistened even more.
He just looked at me, begging. “Emily, give me more time. Please. Just a little more time.”
He always begged like this.
Every time I felt hopeless and hurt, he said it was hard for him too.
But he was the one who begged me to come back.
He couldn’t let go of the fifteen years he’d had with Sophia, and he couldn’t let go of the blood tie to me.
But that didn’t mean I had to keep getting hurt.
