My name is Annabelle Thompson and I’m 28 years old. Four weeks ago, my parents sold my grandmother’s antique piano—the one she promised would be mine—and used all $95,000 to buy my sister a brand new Mercedes. They thought grandma was too sick in hospice to ever find out.
They thought I was too weak to tell her. They were wrong. When I finally told grandma what they’d done, she didn’t cry.
She didn’t scream. She simply reached for her phone, dialed one number, and said seven words that would destroy everything my parents thought they owned. Before I tell you what those seven words were and what happened next at my mother’s 60th birthday party, let me take you back to the day it all started—the afternoon my grandmother was admitted to hospice.
The Call
The call came on a Tuesday afternoon right after my last piano lesson of the day. “Eleanor’s had another heart attack,” my father said. No greeting, no warmth, no concern in his voice.
Just the facts delivered like a weather report. “She’s stable, but they’re moving her to hospice. Family meeting at the hospital in an hour.”
I dropped everything—mid-grading papers for my elementary music students, coffee still steaming on my desk—and drove straight to Mesa Ridge General Hospital.
My hands gripped the steering wheel so tight my knuckles went white. Grandma Eleanor. The woman who’d taught me my first piano scales when I was seven years old.
The woman who’d actually listened when I talked about my dreams of teaching music. The woman who’d been more of a parent to me than my actual parents ever were. By the time I arrived, my parents and my sister Megan were already huddled in a corner of the waiting room, speaking in low voices that stopped the moment they saw me.
My father, Richard Thompson, stood with his arms crossed, tall and imposing in his expensive suit, checking his watch like this was just another business meeting. My mother, Diane, clutched her designer purse like a lifeline, her perfectly manicured nails tapping against the leather. And Megan, four years younger than me, always the favorite, was scrolling through her phone, barely looking up, her blonde highlights catching the fluorescent light.
“Good, you’re here,” my father said, not bothering with pleasantries like “How are you?” or “This must be hard.” Just logistics. Always logistics. “We need to divide responsibilities.”
Not “We need to support each other.” Not “Let’s be there for Mom.” Just responsibilities, like Grandma’s decline was a project that needed task assignments.
The story doesn’t end here — it continues on the next page.
Tap READ MORE to discover the rest 🔎👇
