“Atlas, isn’t today our wedding day? Why are you holding her hand? Why is she wearing a wedding dress?”
“Sister, did you ask me to come here just to see Atlas betray me? I hate you both!”
She turned and ran into the street, crying. My brother shouted, and my mother slapped me hard across the face.
“Why did you call Heidi here! You won’t be satisfied until you drive her insane, will you? If anything happens to Heidi because of you today, I’ll cut off our mother-daughter bond! Atlas, stop her!”
Atlas threw my hand away roughly, and I fell backward. My wedding dress tore against the gravel, scraping my knees until thin lines of blood appeared.
Sitting on the ground, I gave a bitter smile as I watched them all run after Heidi. That kind of scene, I had seen far too many times before.
When I first came back to this family, there was a short time when things were truly happy.
Back then, Mom smiled as she cooked for me, and my brother would take me out for ice cream after school. My younger brother would pull me along to play his favorite computer games.
But everything changed the moment I started dating my neighbor, Atlas. That was when Heidi began to lose control.
She cried and screamed, saying I scared her and that I wanted to send her back to our foster parents’ home.
With tears running down her face, she pointed at me and shouted, “Sister said, why should she have to live that kind of life? Why should she be beaten and scolded while I live comfortably in her place? She’s not happy about it, she wants me to suffer too!”
At first, Mom, my brother, and the younger one still tried to comfort her.
Mom would say softly, “That’s impossible. Sienna would never say something like that.”
My brother would defend me, “She’s a good girl; she’d never say that.”
Our younger one would quietly add, “Sister Heidi, you must have misunderstood Sister Sienna.”
But as time went on, Mom and my younger brother started to take Heidi’s side. When she cried and threw tantrums, their eyes grew cold as they looked at me.
“Will you ever stop? Do you have to bully Heidi? Are you only happy when she’s scared?”
“If I’d known, I would never have brought you back. You’ve destroyed this family.”
Back then, my brother still stood up for me. He said I chose to help girls who suffered from domestic violence.
“A kind girl like Sienna could never say something like that.”
“Mom, don’t be so unfair!”