My name is Katherine. My family’s story is a tangle of grief and loss. When I was five, my parents divorced. Mum filed for separation after falling for another man. Soon, she remarried. Dad never forgot me—he paid child support, took me to his home in the outskirts of York every weekend. His love was my lifeline in those dark years.
Later, Dad married a woman named Eleanor, a widow with two children from her first marriage—Oliver and Emily. I became fast friends with them. Weekends at Dad’s felt like a holiday—I belonged there, wrapped in their warmth. Going back to Mum’s was unbearable; everything there felt wrong.
Mum had two more children with her new husband—a boy and a girl. Together, they started a business that failed. Debts piled up like storm clouds. They sold their spacious flat in central York and moved to a cramped two-bed on the outskirts. Five people in two rooms—life turned suffocating.
Her husband turned to drink. Mum buried herself in work, leaving teenage me to raise my half-siblings. It broke me. One day, I packed my things and fled to Dad’s. I never saw Mum again. All I knew was that my half-brother and sister were taken into care, and she lost custody. Her husband vanished from their lives.
At Dad’s, I came alive again. Eleanor and her mother, Grandma Joan, treated me as their own. Years blurred—now I’m 34, married with two children. Oliver and Emily have families too. We became a real family, bound not just by blood but by love.
When Grandma Margaret, Mum’s mother, passed, she left me her cottage in a quiet village near York. A year later, Dad died. He left his city flat to Oliver and Emily, and his car to me. There was also an unfinished holiday home. We decided to repair it—a place for all of us to gather.
Then, when I least expected it, she appeared—my mother. Twenty years since we’d last met. She tracked down my address and marched in as if no time had passed.
“Heard Gran left you the cottage,” she began, no pleasantries. “What did you get from your father? You’ve got a brother and sister! Where’s the fairness? That’s not just your inheritance—it’s ours. Sell it all, and we’ll split the money three ways.”
I froze, stunned. This woman, who’d abandoned me, now demanded a share of what mattered to me?
“I’m not splitting anything,” I said flatly. “Leave.”
Maybe it’s cruel, but I feel no guilt. She’s a stranger. Her other children mean nothing to me. My real family is Oliver, Emily, Eleanor. They’ve been here all along, through every joy and sorrow.
We finished the holiday home. Now it’s our little heaven, where we gather with the kids, Oliver, Emily, and Eleanor. We laugh, remember Dad and Grandma, make plans for the future. And Mum? She stays in the past, with her demands and grudges. I owe her nothing, and my heart is at peace.
