Changing My Flight, I Canceled the Toxic Family Forever Chapter 05

Changing My Flight, I Canceled the Toxic Family Forever Chapter 05

To keep yesterday’s promise, and to keep me from holding Chloe’s mistake over her, my family got up before dawn the next day.

They stood outside my bedroom, waiting to redo the family portrait with me.

I usually got up by seven.

But by nine, my bedroom door was still shut.

My parents exchanged a look.

Then they signaled for Ethan to knock.

He walked over and rapped hard on my door. “Emma, get up. We’re going to take the pictures. Come on. Mom, Dad, and I are all waiting for you.”

He called out for a long time.

No one answered.

He couldn’t help muttering, “She didn’t drink drugged milk again and pass out, did she?”

The moment he said it, all three of them turned to look at Chloe.

Chloe flinched hard.

Then she started insisting she was innocent, swearing over and over that she had done nothing. “It wasn’t me. I didn’t do anything. You can check the security footage if you don’t believe me.”

Yesterday, my parents had protected her in front of me.

But in private, they had still given her a harsh scolding.

“No matter what, Emma is family. She’s part of this family, too.”

“If we catch you doing something this reckless again, don’t blame us for disowning you.”

Chloe had already regretted it.

When she heard that, she had nodded over and over.

She promised she would change.

Once they ruled out the possibility that I had been drugged again, my parents unlocked my door with the spare key.

The room was empty, and all of them froze.

Guilt flashed across Sarah and David’s faces, quickly followed by shock and then anger.

“We already said we’d make it up to her. And she still left without saying a word? Unbelievable. That ungrateful girl is going to be the death of me.”

The more Sarah cursed, the angrier she became.

She picked up her phone and called the photography studio.

“Hi, we’d like to cancel our family portrait appointment. Yes. We’re not coming.”

Then she ordered Ethan to call me.

Her chest rose and fell hard with anger. “Tell that ungrateful girl to get back here right now. Otherwise, she can forget about ever coming back to this family.”

Ethan called again and again, but each time, the call wouldn’t connect.

“Mom, I can’t get through to Emma. What do we do?”

Sarah slapped the coffee table so hard that the teacup jumped and shattered on the floor.

“How dare she? Now she won’t even pick up the phone?”

She opened her phone and started digging through old messages.

At the very bottom, she finally found the group chat that included me.

She fired off a string of messages.

Then she tried to tag me.

But after scrolling through the members for a long time, she couldn’t find my profile picture.

Chloe reminded her timidly from the side.

“Mom, don’t bother. I think Emma left the group chat.”

The words struck Sarah like a thunderclap.

She repeated what Chloe had just said under her breath.

“What did you say? She left the group chat?”

How was that possible?

When I first came back home, I had wanted to join that group chat so badly.

But Sarah had worried about Chloe’s feelings.

So she kept putting me off and refused to add me.

To get into that group chat, I had begged her for days.

I even got up early every morning to make breakfast for the whole family.

Later, when she could no longer stand my pleading, she listened to Chloe’s idea.

She made a show of adding me to the chat.

Then she secretly created a new family group chat without me.

Back then, I had fought so hard to get into that old group chat.

Now I had left it so easily.

Sarah stood there in confusion as a faint unease crept into her heart.

She suddenly realized I might not have left in a fit of temper.

Then she seemed to remember something.

She called my school counselor, Ms. Reynolds.

“Hi, Ms. Reynolds. I wanted to ask which school Emma applied to.”

When Sarah heard the answer, her vision went black.

She almost fainted.