My sister and I had not spoken for more than twenty years. And now she wants to come live with me… I’m at a loss.
My name is Emily. I’m forty years old, with a family of my own—two sons, a loving husband, a cozy flat in Manchester, and a cottage in the countryside where we spend every summer. By all accounts, life has treated me well. Yet here I stand, torn by a choice that haunts me. Because this choice involves my sister—a woman separated from me not just by distance, but by years of silence, resentment, and sorrow.
When I was five, we lost our father. Ten years later, cancer took our mother. I was left alone. My older sister, Charlotte, was already grown—twenty-three at the time. Before her passing, Mum begged her not to abandon me. Charlotte became my legal guardian, and we stayed together in our childhood home. But to call that place a home would be a stretch.
I was a troubled teen—angry, defiant, adrift. Charlotte was stern, distant, unyielding. She never held me, never offered a kind word. She didn’t scold—she simply watched me with indifference. I remember crying into my pillow at night, dreaming only of escape.
At seventeen, I fell in love. I brought my sweetheart home, but Charlotte’s husband—by then, she’d married William—shouted him away. Later, Charlotte said coldly, “If you don’t like it, you can leave.” I packed my things and walked out. No one stopped me. No one called. No one came looking.
My sweetheart, James, and I didn’t last long—he wasn’t who I’d believed him to be. We scraped by in his parents’ flat, barely making ends meet until we parted ways. Returning to Charlotte’s was never an option. She was expecting a child by then, and after everything, I knew I no longer belonged there.
I moved to Birmingham, found work as a shop assistant, and lived in a dingy bedsit. It was hard, frightening, but I clung to every chance I got. Then I met Henry—steady, kind, dependable. We married. Our two sons came along. In time, we bought our own flat, then a car, and eventually, a snug little cottage near Windermere.
Charlotte? I heard nothing from her for years. Rumours reached me now and then—she and William were doing well, he’d started a business, they had a grand house, money to spare. And then, suddenly, it all collapsed. William took to drink, they divorced, sold the house, and split what remained. She moved into a cramped flat with her daughter.
I kept my distance. Everyone has their own path to walk. But months ago, a mutual acquaintance wrote to me: Charlotte’s daughter had married. And… thrown her mother out. Just like that. No going back.
Then the calls began. The messages. The letters. Charlotte. The sister I hadn’t spoken to in two decades. “Forgive me…”, “I’m ill…”, “I’ve nowhere to go…”, “Let me stay at the cottage, just for a while…” I read them and don’t know what to feel. Pity? Anger? Pain? Or just emptiness?
Henry says, “Let her stay. We’re only there in summer. And she’s still family.” I stay quiet. I think. I remember myself—seventeen, standing on the doorstep of the house that no longer cared whether I lived or vanished.
I’ve forgiven her. Truly. Without bitterness. But to take her back means letting into my life someone who once erased me from hers. What if she leaves again? Disappears once more? I don’t want to carry another’s burdens. Yet I can’t turn her away.
I stand at the threshold. And I don’t know which side to choose. And that—that aches worse than anything.
