“Physically, yes,” he said. “Emotionally? Mom and Dad barely talk to her. They’re like roommates who ignore her. She eats dinner in her room most nights. And when CPS checked in last month, she said everything was fine because she’s so close to aging out that she doesn’t want to risk foster care. She’d rather be lonely than end up in the system.”
I understood why.
It still broke my heart.
Part 6
In March, Sienna called me herself.
We hadn’t talked much since I got back from Scotland—just a few brief texts here and there—but this time her voice was steadier, older somehow.
“Hey,” she said. “I wanted to tell you before you heard it from someone else. I got into state on a full academic scholarship. I’m moving into the dorms in August.”
Pride hit me so hard it almost hurt.
“Sienna, that’s incredible,” I said. “I’m so proud of you. A full ride is amazing.”
She laughed, but there was sadness underneath it.
“I basically raised myself this year,” she said. “Did all my college applications alone. Wrote all my essays alone. Figured out financial aid alone. Mom and Dad didn’t help with any of it. They didn’t even ask.”
We talked for over an hour about her plans, her fears, and the shape of the life she wanted once she was free. She told me she’d been seeing a therapist through her school counselor and was finally beginning to understand that what happened in our house had never been normal.
“I get why you left,” she said quietly. “I get why you set boundaries. I’m going to do the same thing once I’m out. I’m going to build my own life, and they can figure out how to function without using their kids as unpaid labor.”
The CPS case closed in May, just before Sienna turned eighteen.
Troy called me himself.
“We’re closing the case because all the children are adults now,” he said. “For what it’s worth, you didn’t cause this. Your parents did. You simply stopped enabling them to hide how inadequate they were. Your siblings are smart, resilient, and getting out. That’s the best outcome we could realistically hope for.”
Then he added something that stayed with me.
“What you did—setting boundaries, protecting your marriage, refusing to sacrifice yourself—that took courage. Your siblings learned from watching you that it’s possible to choose yourself. That matters.”
My parents still haven’t spoken to me.
It has been twenty months since the honeymoon, twenty months since the boundary that broke whatever illusion our family had been built on. I’ve seen my parents only a handful of times from a distance—at family events where we stayed on opposite sides of the room, at a grocery store where my mother turned her cart around and left the second she saw me.
They look older now. Smaller somehow. My mother’s hair has gone mostly gray. My father has developed a stoop. They look like ordinary aging people who made catastrophic choices and paid for them.
Sometimes I feel sorry for them.
Mostly I feel nothing.
Madison is thriving in Seattle. Carter and Dylan share an apartment and are doing well in school. Sienna moved into the dorms in August and calls me regularly with stories about classes, friends, and the strange joy of finally having a life that belongs to her.
She told me once that she barely talks to our parents.
