When I was 20 years old, my sister left her 2-month-old daughter with my mother and disappeared. When she didn’t show up even on her daughter’s second birthday, my mother terminated her parental rights and obtained guardianship of little Yulia. By the time Yulia was 5, our mother was gone too. She referred to Yulia as her granddaughter and me as her mother. It was the hardest blow for both of us. My mother left me her apartment, and there, just the two of us, we started rebuilding our lives from scratch without our mom.
As for myself, I never got married and didn’t have children, even though I turned 40. My fiancé left me when he found out I was going to take care of my sister’s runaway daughter. He said that if it were his child, he would have taken responsibility, but the issue was that Yulia was a stranger to him.
After that, I didn’t even try to build relationships. I worked quietly, raising Yulia. Now, she has turned 19. She had become a young beauty. One fine day, someone knocked on our door. I opened it and saw my sister. Her fancy car and brand-new smartphone made Yulia insult me with harsh words for depriving her of the chance to live in a wealthy family, in luxury and abundance
. I let her go and remained all alone. Despair consumed me. I couldn’t taste food, lost track of the days of the week, and went to work on autopilot. One day, my boss called me in. We talked for a long time, and at the end of the conversation, he invited me on a date, jokingly saying he’d fire me if I refused. I was so tired of my four walls that I agreed. Half a year later, I found out I was pregnant. I was overjoyed.
Vova, my former boss and now my husband, was ecstatic when he learned about my condition. We got married, and my dream became a reality at the age of 41. Two months ago, someone knocked on our door again. I opened it and saw my sister, Yulia, and a 16-year-old boy. It turned out that my sister remembered her daughter when her son needed surgery, and Yulia could have been a donor match. When her daughter didn’t match for the donation, and her husband found out the boy wasn’t his, he kicked my sister and the kids out, leaving her with nothing.
She was claiming her share of our mother’s apartment, and that’s why she showed up. You may judge me, but I didn’t even let them inside the house. I don’t need such people in my life, and I can’t afford to be nervous, so they can go their own way. She still owes me for the 19 years of raising her daughter.
