Chapter 7 - Reclaiming My Space
Two years passed. My life in Seattle was thriving, peaceful, and rich with purpose. I had received another promotion, bought a beautiful condo in the city with a view of the mountains, and my relationship with Julian had grown into a loving, stable partnership based on mutual trust and respect.
My contact with my parents remained practically non-existent, though I kept in regular touch with Aunt Sarah. Through her, I heard updates about their lives from a safe distance.
My parents had indeed sold their large suburban house and moved into a modest two-bedroom rental apartment. The loss of their status symbol had been a massive blow to my father's ego, but it had forced him to confront his financial reality. Without me as a financial buffer or scapegoat, he was forced to take a salaried management position at a local firm, abandoning his struggling consultancy.
Chloe, deprived of her safety net, had gone through a painful but necessary transformation. After failing to maintain her lifestyle on coffee shop wages, she had enrolled in a community college dental hygiene program. It was a grueling two years for her, but without anyone to bail her out, she had actually stuck with it, graduated, and landed a stable job at a clinic.
One evening, Aunt Sarah called me with a hesitant tone in her voice.
"Alice, honey," she began. "Your mother reached out to me. She... she knows you're doing very well in Seattle. She saw a post on LinkedIn about your recent award at work."
I adjusted the phone, leaning back against my sofa. "And?"
"She wants to apologize. Both of them do. They realize now how horribly they treated you. They know they blew up their relationship with their eldest daughter, and your father especially feels deep shame for how he handled everything. They asked if they could write you a letter. No demands, no requests for money—just a letter."
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I thought about it for a long moment. Two years ago, I would have burned such a letter unread. But I was no longer the angry, exhausted girl packing her furniture at six in the morning. I was secure, happy, and entirely independent. Their power over me was long gone.
"Tell them they can send an email," I said calmly. "I'll read it."
