Their Obedient Youngest Daughter Stopped Coming Home Chapter 06
“Ellis, your piece made the shortlist.”
Mr. Harland announced it during the campus paper’s end-of-semester meeting.
I was doodling boxes across the margin of my notebook.
It was the state collegiate journalism award.
The article was my long-form report on students who were left behind during school breaks.
The source material came from my own life.
Of course, I never wrote about myself.
I built the story around three other students I interviewed instead.
But with every word I wrote, I knew exactly what it felt like to be left behind.
“Ellis, I’ve lined up a internship for you—long-form reporting desk at a local outlet. Interested?”
Mr. Harland slid a business card across the table.
“I am.”
While everyone else went home for the break, I went to work.
The internship wasn’t paid a lot. They covered lunch and reimbursed transportation.
That was enough.
—
On my first day, I met the editor assigned to mentor me.
She was in her early thirties. Short hair. Fast talker.
“So you’re the one who wrote the piece about students left behind during breaks?”
“I am.”
“It was good. But you held back.”
“You had stronger emotions than what ended up on the page. Why did you hold them back?”
I didn’t answer.
She studied me for a second. Then let it drop.
“Come out in the field with me for two weeks. We’ll talk after that.”
Over those two months, I followed her through six different assignments.
We covered everything from demolition and relocation projects to employment centers for people with disabilities.
From the wholesale market at four in the morning to the emergency room at eleven at night.
Every assignment was exhausting.
But after every story, I felt my feet settle a little more firmly on the ground.
I wasn’t the ghost drifting through my own house, unnoticed.
—
I was Ellis. Someone with a byline. Someone whose name people remembered.
On my last day, my editor bought me a cup of coffee.
“When recruiting season comes around, send us your résumé.”
“I’m only a freshman.”
“I know. I’m saying it now so no one else snatches you up first.”
She stirred her coffee. Then looked up.
“Does your family know you’re interning here?”
“They don’t.”
“They don’t?”
“I’m… not really in touch with them.”
She didn’t pity me, just nodded.
“Then you’d better learn to stand on your own two feet.”
That helped more than any comfort ever could.
Sophomore year, I moved off campus.
Romy and I rented a small two-bedroom apartment about ten minutes from school by bike.
It wasn’t much. But it had its own kitchen.
I learned how to cook. The first thing I made was clam chowder. I overstated it.
—
Romy took one bite. Her face twisted.
“Were you trying to pickle this, or…?”
“It’s that bad?”
“It is. But I’m still finishing it.”
She did. Then she washed the dishes too.
Little by little, ordinary happiness found me.
I woke up because of my own alarm.
Not because someone needed me to do chores.
Everything in the fridge was mine. No one else would eat it before I got home.
My umbrella waited in the same spot by the front door every rainy day.
Those things were so small. Kids from normal families would never think of them as precious.
To me, each one was a brick I’d salvaged from the rubble.
Enough pieces, and eventually you could build a new roof.
That fall, the journalism awards were announced.
My article won second place.
When Mr. Harland read my name onstage, people applauded. Not a thunderous applause, but it was real.
Back in my seat, Romy snapped a picture of me holding the
—
certificate.
“You should post it.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
Because I’d blocked everyone who might be connected to my family.
And because this certificate wasn’t valuable only if someone else saw it.
I’d seen it. That was enough.
“I just don’t really like posting.”
Romy shrugged and saved the picture to her own phone.
“Then I’ll keep it. If you ever want it, just ask.”
Life kept moving. The cherry trees around Riverton bloomed.
The university held an intercollegiate writing competition.
I entered. My essay was titled The Unseen.
It was about a girl who was invisible in her own family for years—until she found herself in a strange city where no one knew her name, and finally discovered her own.
It won first prize.
A local news crew interviewed the winners during the awards ceremony.
—
“What inspired this piece?”
“People around me.”
“The emotions feel incredibly real. It almost reads like your own story.”
“Good writing takes empathy.”
The interview stayed on the university website for three days.
A local media account reposted it with the headline: [Stanton University Sophomore Wins State Writing Competition with The Unseen, Stirring Readers Across the State]
I never shared the article. I never told anyone.
But the internet remembers.
Eventually, one person saw that video.
During the summer after sophomore year, I was in the apartment revising my internship report.
The doorbell rang.
I figured Romy had forgotten her keys again.
As I walked to the door, I called out, “Don’t tell me you left your keys again—”
I opened it. It wasn’t Romy. It was Blythe.
She stood quietly in the hallway. A plain white T-shirt. A paper bag in her hand.
—
She looked thinner. Her hair was shorter.
There were faint shadows under her eyes.
The moment she saw me, relief crossed her face. Relief that I was okay. Exhaustion from the search.
And then something that took me a long moment to identify. Guilt.
“Ellis.” Her voice trembled as she said my name.
“I’ve been looking for you for so long.”