The Unsent Appeal Chapter 05
My parents were both worried and angry.
“She ended her lease without a word. Does she even think of us as her parents?”
“We criticize her a little, and now she runs off where no one can find her?”
Tyler leaned against the wall in the hallway.
“Forget it. Chloe’s always been independent.”
“She has nowhere else to go. She’ll show up at the new house eventually.”
My parents, thinking he had a point, drove straight back to Wellesley.
I wasn’t on the porch. I wasn’t inside.
In a fit of rage, Dad swept everything off the breakfast table.
Plates crashed onto the carpet, and coffee dripped down the table legs.
“We prepared all this for her, and she doesn’t show up, doesn’t answer her phone.”
“What exactly does she want from us?”
He ordered Tyler to keep calling. “I refuse to believe she can ignore us forever.”
Tyler called again and again.
He also texted me, saying the whole family had made breakfast especially for me and that Mom and Dad were very worried.
Then he added a complaint: *The whole table of food went to waste.*
*We’re all sitting here hungry waiting for you. You always have to make everything about you.*
Allison, who hadn’t said a word, bent down and picked up the croissants and sausages that had fallen to the floor.
She stared at the food in her hands, her expression shifting.
“You say this was for Chloe, but this is all stuff *we* like.”
She looked up and asked, “What does Chloe like to eat?”
The people who had just been blaming me all fell silent.
Mom’s face went pale. Her lips moved, but no sound came out.
*That’s right,* she thought. *What does Chloe like to eat?*
After Tyler was born, I had become even more of an afterthought in Allison’s shadow.
Not wanting her to feel neglected because of her younger siblings, my parents indulged nearly every one of her requests.
If she wanted food from the other side of town, they would drive out to get it.