My Brother Said I Was Family But He Never Gave Me a Home Chapter 09
Three days before school started, my mom and Michael went with me to buy supplies for
orientation and dorm life. We found Christopher
waiting outside the new condo.
Michael stepped in front of us, on guard. “What do
you want? You’re not welcome here.”
Christopher’s eyes were bloodshot. He looked
worse than I had ever seen him. Gaunt. Older.
His eyes stayed locked on me.
“Move. I need to talk to my sister.”
Michael was young and had a hot temper. He punched Christopher in the face.
“What kind of brother are you? Are you on her ID? Has she ever introduced you as her brother in
public? Have you ever lived under the same roof?”
“What have you ever done for her? What gives you the right to call yourself her brother?”
Christopher hadn’t slept in days. He stumbled and fell.
Michael wound up to hit him again, but Mom and I held him back.
I touched his head. “Easy. Let me talk to him.”
His eyes were red, and he sounded angry. “Talk about what? You’re not going back with him, are you?”
I laughed softly. “Don’t be stupid. Am I crazy?”
He wiped his eyes, grunted, and turned away.
Linda sighed and pulled him back a step.
Christopher slowly picked himself up.
He was shaking all over.
He pulled out a form from his pocket, a student residency sponsorship letter.
“I took care of the residency. You don’t have to stay with them.”
“I told you to wait. I said I would fix it. Why couldn’t you just listen to me?”
I looked at the late letter. A dull ache flickered
through my chest.
I laughed. “Fresh date. Must have been easy to get on short notice.”
His face went pale. “I… the company had a cash
flow problem. I couldn’t-”
Even now, the explanation I had once wanted so badly, the one that would prove I wasn’t just an afterthought he didn’t care about; felt pathetic and
ridiculous next to this piece of paper.
I cut him off. “So when the company had a cash
flow problem, you still bought Sophia a condo. You still threw her a fifty-thousand-dollar
graduation party.”
He looked at my gentle, expressionless face.
His legs buckled.
All the color drained from his face.
“Yes. I messed up. But I thought you would have everything eventually. If I didn’t give her things
now, it would damage her emotionally.”
“I handled it badly, I know that. But this is my first
time dealing with something like this. I didn’t know
what to do. I never meant to make you feel
unwanted.”
“Emily, would you really throw away our family, the family we waited so long to have, over a house
and a party? I waited thirteen years for you.”
His voice cracked with grief.
But the look in his eyes didn’t move me.
It was the look of someone who had knowingly done wrong and didn’t want to admit it, so he was playing the guilt card.
I smiled bitterly. “It was never a family. We never had that. We were never together.”
“You say it was just bad behavior. But for years, you never asked what I liked. You just gave me whatever Sophia liked, even things I hate.”
“You always said you’d fix it later. But would you ever do that to Sophia? No. You memorize everything she loves.”
“You never did that for me. You put me in a studio apartment. You never introduced me to any
relatives or friends. You gave me the guests
Sophia didn’t want for my graduation party.”
“You said you’d stay with me, but you snuck out to go comfort her.”
“You said yourself that you only brought me back to honor Mom and Dad’s memory.”
“You talked about sending me to a branch office or
introducing me to ‘the right person’ who’d take me
far away. You said Sophia was your only real
sister.”
