My name’s Scarlett. When I was 12, my mom left—chose another life, another man. My dad raised me alone, and I grew up with a hollow ache where her love should have been.
Now I’m 28, Dad has passed, and I’ve inherited our family home—the only place that ever felt like mine. Then out of the blue, she calls. Terminally ill. Wants to “fix things” before she dies. She wants to move in, in the house she abandoned years ago.
My gut clenched. “You left me,” I said, quietly but firmly. She wept and called me cruel. That ache returned: I spent most of my life grieving a living mother I couldn’t reach.
Days later came the knock at the door. The police told me someone unresponsive had collapsed on my steps. My mom. Bags still packed at her side. They asked if I was her emergency contact. I said, “No.”
Guilt blossomed in my chest—but I made peace with it. I grieved her absence more than most people grieve death.
She’s in the hospital now—not because I turned her away theatrically, but because I upheld my boundary. Am I heartless? Sometimes self-preservation looks cold, but I’m protecting the home I built without her—and the peace I carved from grief.
