Maar de ochtend brak aan met het geluid van dichtslaande autodeuren. Ik vloog naar het raam en zag papa lege koffers weer in de SUV laden. Mijn koffers bleven in de kamer staan, onuitgepakt als bewijs van mijn nieuwe realiteit.

‘We bellen elke week,’ beloofde mijn moeder bij de deur, zonder me echt aan te kijken. ‘Dit is tijdelijk, lieverd. Je doet iets geweldigs voor je zus.’

Madison keek nauwelijks op van haar telefoon.

“Dankjewel, Teresa. Ik draag mijn eerste kampioenschap aan jou op, of zoiets.”

‘Alsjeblieft, doe dit niet.’ Ik greep papa’s arm vast. ‘Alsjeblieft, ik neem leningen. Ik neem drie banen. Laat me hier alsjeblieft niet achter.’

Hij aaide mijn hand alsof ik een schrikachtig paard was dat gekalmeerd moest worden.

“De beslissing is genomen. Je grootouders verwachten je hulp. Stel ze niet teleur.”

They drove away as the morning mist clung to the fields. I stood on that porch in my pajamas, watching the dust settle behind their departure, feeling something fundamental break inside my chest. They had brought me here under false pretenses, stolen my future, and abandoned me like excess baggage.

Grandpa Frank’s hand settled on my shoulder, heavy and warm.

“Come on, honey. Breakfast is getting cold.”

But I couldn’t move. I stood there staring at the empty road, trying to understand how the parents who had raised me, who claimed to love me, could simply drive away from my dreams. The golden child needed to shine, and I was the sacrifice required to polish her glow.

What they didn’t tell me—what I discovered that very afternoon—was that they had already withdrawn me from State University. The paperwork had been filed weeks ago, my dorm assignment released. My future erased with the stroke of a pen and lies disguised as family loyalty.

Four in the morning came like a slap to the face. Grandpa Frank’s gentle knock on my door might as well have been a sledgehammer for how it shattered my sleep.

“Time to get up, honey. Cows don’t milk themselves.”

I stumbled out of bed, my body protesting every movement. Three days since my parents had abandoned me, and I was still waiting to wake up from this nightmare. My hands, soft from years of nothing harder than holding pencils and typing on keyboards, fumbled with the work clothes Grandma Rose had laid out for me.

The Nebraska morning air bit at my exposed skin as I followed Grandpa Frank to the barn. Fifty dairy cows stood in their stalls, udders heavy with milk, their breath creating small clouds in the cool air. The smell hit me first—a mixture of hay, manure, and something earthier that seemed to seep into my pores.

“Ever milked a cow before?” Grandpa asked, though we both knew the answer.

“No.” My voice sounded small in the vast barn.

He showed me the process, his gnarled hands moving with practiced efficiency. When my turn came, the cow shifted restlessly, sensing my inexperience. The first squeeze produced nothing but an irritated moo and a sharp pain in my forearms.

“Gentle, but firm,” Grandpa coached. “Like you’re shaking hands with an old friend.”

By the tenth cow, blisters had formed on my palms. By the twentieth, those blisters had burst, leaving raw, weeping wounds. I gritted my teeth and kept working, refusing to complain. Pride was all I had left, and I wouldn’t let them take that too.

Breakfast came after the milking, when the sun was finally painting the horizon orange and pink. Grandma Rose had prepared a feast worthy of farmhands—which I supposed I now was. Eggs from their chickens, bacon from their pigs, bread she had baked yesterday. My stomach churned with more than hunger.

“I’ll teach you to collect eggs this afternoon,” Grandma said, her voice carefully neutral as she watched me struggle to hold my fork with my damaged hands. “Gentler work.”

But I noticed the tremor in her own hands as she poured coffee, the way she braced herself against the counter when she thought no one was looking. The Parkinson’s was progressing, though she tried to hide it behind her warm smile and busy movements.

After breakfast came fence repair with Grandpa. The summer sun climbed higher, turning the fields into a furnace. Sweat poured down my back as I held posts while he hammered, my destroyed hands screaming with each grip. His knees, I noticed, buckled occasionally, and he had to stop frequently to rest, though he passed it off as “checking our work.”

“Your father never took to farming,” he said during one of these breaks, mopping his brow with a handkerchief. “Always had his eyes on the city, on bigger things.”

“Apparently I’m not worth big things either,” I muttered, then immediately felt guilty for the self-pity.

Grandpa studied me with eyes that had seen decades of seasons change.

“Worth isn’t determined by others, Teresa. It’s something you build yourself, day by day, choice by choice.”

That evening, after a day that felt like a week, I finally got a moment to charge my phone. Seventeen missed calls from friends, dozens of texts asking why I hadn’t shown up to graduation parties, whether I was ready for orientation. I stared at the screen, unable to form responses that wouldn’t sound insane.

Sorry, can’t make it. I’ve been abandoned on a farm so my sister can play tennis.

Seemed too pathetic to type.

Instead, I called home. Mom answered on the fourth ring, slightly breathless.

“Teresa, how’s everything going?”

“How’s everything going?” I repeated, incredulous. “You left me here. You withdrew me from college without telling me. How do you think it’s going?”

“Don’t be dramatic, sweetheart. It’s a gap year. Lots of students take them. You’re gaining valuable life experience.”

In the background, I heard the distinctive pock-pock of tennis balls being hit.

“Is that Madison practicing?”

“Oh, yes. We’re at the most amazing facility in Denver. You should see the courts, Teresa. Clay, just like the French Open. Madison’s coach says she’s never seen such natural talent.”

“That’s great,” I said. The words tasted bitter. “When are you coming back for me?”

A pause. Too long.

“Well, we’re actually heading to California next week. There’s a tournament Madison needs to enter, and then we’re looking at apartments near the training facility. But we’ll visit soon. Maybe Christmas.”

“Christmas? Mom, it’s June. You’re talking about six months from now.”

“Time will fly. You’ll see. Oh, I have to go. Madison needs me. Give our love to Grandma and Grandpa.”

The line went dead.

I stared at the phone, wondering if throwing it against the barn wall would provide any satisfaction. Probably not—and I couldn’t afford to replace it.

That night, unable to sleep from the pain in my hands and the ache in my chest, I explored the farmhouse. In Grandpa’s office, I found photo albums dating back decades. Pictures of my father as a boy, working these same fields with a scowl on his face. Pictures of him leaving for college, proud and eager. Pictures of his wedding, my birth, Madison’s birth. The photos grew sparse after that. My parents’ visits had dwindled from yearly to every few years, to almost never. Grandma Rose and Grandpa Frank had been forgotten, useful only when convenience demanded it.

A soft footfall made me look up. Grandma Rose stood in the doorway in her nightgown, holding a mason jar.

“For your hands,” she said simply, offering the homemade salve.

I accepted it gratefully, spreading the cooling mixture on my ruined palms.

“Grandma, are you and Grandpa really okay managing all this?”

She sank into the chair beside me with a soft grunt.

“We’re old, honey, not helpless. Though I won’t lie and say it hasn’t been getting harder. Frank’s knees aren’t what they used to be, and my hands…” She held them up, showing the subtle but persistent tremor. “They didn’t send me here to help, did they? They sent me here to take over.”

Grandma’s silence was answer enough. She reached over and smoothed my hair back from my face, a gesture so maternal it made my chest tight.

“What they did wasn’t right, Teresa. But maybe, just maybe, something good can come from something wrong.”