“Will you be okay?” she asked.
“I’ll be better than okay.”
That evening, the doorbell rang.
Amanda and Robert stood outside together.
Neither looked as confident as usual.
“We need to talk,” Amanda said.
“Then we will talk honestly,” I replied. “No guilt and no manipulation.”
Robert glanced past me.
“You’re not inviting us inside?”
“That depends on why you came.”
Amanda folded her arms.
“You ruined Christmas for everyone.”
“I did not ruin anything. You created plans based on taking advantage of me, and I chose not to participate.”
“We lost thousands of dollars on reservations,” Robert said. “We spent the entire holiday dealing with eight disappointed children.”
“And I spent Christmas peacefully for the first time in years.”
They stared at me.
Then I finally said what I should have said long ago.
“You stopped treating me like family. You turned me into a service—useful whenever you needed childcare, food, money, or help, but unimportant the rest of the time.”
