Because I wasn’t born with a Y chromosome, my father treated me—and my three sisters—like junk mail he forgot to toss. I was six when I noticed the blank stare in the hospital photo where he held baby-me; no pride, no warmth, just the look of someone stuck with the wrong order. Over the next four years he delivered each of us, one by one, to Grandma Margaret’s doorstep like unwanted furniture—first me, then Mia, Sophie, and finally Grace. His mantra, overheard at my birth, was simple: “Don’t get too attached; we’ll try again.”
Grandma’s small house became our real home. She baked four tiny birthday cakes every year, read bedtime stories without fail, and never raised her voice. Meanwhile, our parents mailed generic cards—no messages, no visits—until the day Grandma’s phone rang with news of a baby boy named Lucas. Suddenly our parents reappeared, shiny and smiling, parading Lucas and his monogrammed rattle as proof of their perfect family. Then they vanished again.
Eight years later, fate intervened. A lawyer arrived at Grandma’s looking for Walter—my long-estranged grandfather—who had secretly built a construction empire and was now terminally ill. Dad raided Grandma’s mail, pieced together the inheritance trail, and arrived in a rented U-Haul proclaiming, “Time to come home, girls.” Translation: keep Lucas company and secure the fortune Dad assumed was coming.
Their house was a museum to Lucas’s Lego kingdom; we slept on sofas and were treated as unpaid staff—laundry, dishes, babysitting—while Lucas called us “girl-servants.” After three weeks, I packed a bag and walked six miles to Walter’s peeling white house. One honest conversation later, he called Grandma: “No more hiding. We fix this.”
Enter Marissa, Walter’s razor-sharp niece and a family-law attorney with her own grudge against deadbeat fathers. Together we filed for guardianship, armed with school records, photos, and Dad’s own texts branding us “financial deadweight.” Months of hearings followed. Dad claimed we’d been “kidnapped” and “manipulated,” but the judge saw through the theatrics. Grandma received permanent guardianship; Walter rewrote his will, leaving everything—every dollar, every property—to Julia, Mia, Sophie, and Grace. Lucas, Mom, and Dad got nothing.
Dad’s rage exploded in late-night calls and furious texts; Mom simply went quiet. We moved back to Grandma’s, and Walter spent his final two years teaching Sophie to fish, helping Mia build birdhouses, reading history with Grace, and buying me my first camera. When he passed, we were all at his side. His last words to me: “I should have come back sooner, but I’m glad I came back at all.”
So am I.