I was fourteen the day my father died.
Everything after that felt like a blur—black dresses, quiet whispers, the smell of flowers that made my stomach turn. But what I remember most clearly wasn’t the funeral.
It was her voice.
“Pay me $400 rent,” my stepmom said, standing in the doorway of my room just a week later. Her arms were crossed, her expression cold in a way I had never seen before. “Or I’ll send you to boarding school.”
I thought she was joking. I actually laughed.
Then I realized she wasn’t.
“I don’t have that kind of money,” I said, my voice shaking.
“Then I guess you’d better start packing.”
I begged. I cried. I reminded her I was still a kid. That this was my home. That my dad wouldn’t have wanted this.
Her face didn’t change.
“Your father isn’t here anymore,” she said flatly. “And I’m not running a charity.”
I stayed as long as I could—two more weeks, scraping together excuses, hoping she’d soften.
She didn’t.
One night, she left my suitcase by the front door.
“I’ve arranged the paperwork,” she said. “Boarding school. You leave tomorrow.”
That was it.
No hug. No goodbye.
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