THE BANISHMENT
Maria watched through the rear window as their house faded into the distance.
She saw Isabella standing on the porch, frozen in guilt, watching her 13-year-old sister take the fall for her mistake.
Her father drove for six hours in total silence. He dropped her at Aunt Carmen’s house in a different state.
“Don’t call. Don’t write,” were his final words.
Maria spent her teenage years as an outcast. She was “the girl who got pregnant at 13.”
What she didn’t know was that shortly after she left, Isabella suffered a miscarriage.
The sacrifice had been for nothing. But Isabella kept the secret buried. She let her sister live in exile to save her own skin.
I hope she’s happy, Maria thought every night. I hope it was worth it.
Twenty years passed. Maria became a top child advocacy lawyer in Chicago.
She never looked back. Until an email arrived from a stranger named Sophie.