I have a friend named Emily. She and I have been friends since we were students. Together we studied at the Pedagogical University. Immediately after university Emily got married because she was pregnant with her first daughter.
I, of course, told her about my fears. That men didn’t always stay with the women they married because they were pregnant, but Emily insisted. In her opinion, her husband loved her. The pregnancy simply sped up their relationship. After her daughter was born another two years later, her second daughter was born. Emily worked as a high school biology teacher.
We became colleagues with her. More than once she came to work and told me in tears about her terrible relationship with her husband. He started drinking and constantly fought with her, saying he married her only because of the children. And when her older daughter was 6 years old and her younger daughter was 4, her husband left her for another woman. Though their relationship was not very good, but there was money in the family. And with her husband gone, things only got worse. How much does a teacher get paid? Emily could barely feed her daughters.
That is when a mutual friend suggested she go to Italy to work and look after the family of old people. Accommodation is free, food, too, that is, the money is decent clean. That’s when Emily decided she was going. She left the children with her parents and left. Not once, of course, she received a call from her older sister who was still indignant, saying how dare she leave her offspring on her elderly parents and leave like that. Emily had never had a relationship with her sister at all – it was even strange that they were siblings. But Emily paid no attention to her sister’s unpleasant words and still worked abroad. In the 15 years that Emily was there, very accustomed to her wards – an elderly couple, and daughters constantly sent money to their parents.
As a result the daughters studied at good universities, the eldest even got her own family. Emily managed to put money together to buy her an apartment, while the youngest was still studying. That’s when grief struck – first the husband in the Italian couple died, and then the wife. There was no more work for Emily. And she didn’t think to look for something either. She was tired after 15 years in a foreign country. So she decided to return home to her children and parents. And there was such news – the older sister and her children lived with her mother and father, Emily was not allowed into the house. They said where she had been all these years. Only her sister looked after her parents, although all these years it was Emily who sent money for an apartment and for her mother and father for treatment. Anyway, now Emily has no place to live, her eldest daughter took her in. She is thinking of suing her sister. But will it work out? Her father and mother are in a serious condition, they are about to pass away. I would not want to lose the house, in which I invested so much.
