When the Countdown Ended, I Became the Family Curse Chapter 02 (Continue)
They both went rigid. Dad drew a long breath and forced something that almost passed for a smile.
“We just… need some time to process this, that’s all.”
I watched them walk away and caught the murmur between them. “She was supposed to die. She didn’t. What are we supposed to do with that?”
I didn’t understand. Wasn’t my surviving supposed to be a good thing?
I turned toward the window. The sun hadn’t changed — same light, same angle — but the warmth had gone out of it.
After that day, everything in the house shifted.
Mom moved me into the storage room. Sean was growing, she said, and needed more space.
She set the table in silence — usually three places, forgetting mine at first, then adding it back without a word.
Dad spoke even less. Some days he’d come home, spot me sitting in the yard, and go around to the back door instead.
Only Sean still came around. He hovered in the doorway of the storage room, watching me like something behind glass at a zoo.
For eighteen years, I’d been the one they poured everything into. Now I was the reason everything went wrong.
I left the faucet dripping once, and Dad’s jaw immediately tightened.
“Did you do that on purpose? All you ever do is waste water! Do you have any idea how high the water bill is? You’re a drain on this family!”
“Dad, I didn’t mean to —”
“Don’t call me that.” He was already walking away.
When Sean missed a passing grade by a single point, Mom blamed me. I’d been moving around the house too much, she said — distracting him.
“We could’ve had a normal life,” she said. “You ruined it.”
One night the food came out overcooked, and Mom slammed her fork on the table.
“This is all because you didn’t die. This whole house has gone to hell — even dinner is ruined now!”
I didn’t know what to say. My vision blurred, and my voice came out small and cracking. “I thought I was going to die too.”
The day a light bulb blew when I flipped the switch, Mom finally lost it.
“You’re a jinx! Everything in this house has been falling apart ever since you outlived that number! You’re a curse — that’s what you are!”
“Six thousand days, Mia. Eighteen years. Your dad and I counted every single one while we raised you. We gave you everything, and Sean got nothing.”
“We got ready to let you go, again and again… and then you —” She couldn’t finish. She didn’t have to.
Eighteen years of sacrifice — the countdown they’d built their whole lives around — and I was the punchline, still breathing. But it wasn’t just that I was alive.
It was because my death was supposed to settle the debt — all the years Sean went without, all the things they’d poured into me instead. My dying would have made it even. My living made it pointless.
I told myself I could fix it. If I worked hard enough, swallowed every insult, and made myself useful — maybe they’d soften. Maybe they’d remember what I used to be to them.
So I took over everything — laundry, cooking, groceries, scrubbing the floors on my hands and knees. I kept the house cleaner than it had ever been and put meals on the table that I barely got to touch.
None of it mattered. Not a kind word, not a softened look — nothing I did registered. The weight kept falling off me, and the girl in the mirror stopped looking like someone I recognized.
The neighbors started to notice. Talk made its way through the block, and eventually one of them said something to my parents — that maybe they were being too hard on me, that I was still their kid.
Mom didn’t even lower her voice. “As far as I’m concerned, I don’t have a daughter.” She said it right there, with the neighbor on the porch. “She’s a jinx. A curse on this house. As long as she’s here, nothing will ever go right.”
Dad backed her up. “We raised her for eighteen years — we did our part. Now she’s just sitting here, dead weight for all of us.”
Something inside my chest caved in. I couldn’t pull a full breath.
Every little thing that went wrong in that house was pinned on me.
And then there was Sean.