Blood Ties

Chapter4

Sera

Fifteen years earlier

Before everything broke, there were the boys.

Five of them, always trailing behind me like ducklings that had learned early I was safer than the world. I was older by just enough years to matter — old enough to be bossy, old enough to be trusted, old enough to be blamed if something went wrong.

I didn't mind.

They filled the house with noise and motion and the constant thud of running feet. Someone was always yelling. Someone else was crying. There were doors slamming, arguments over nothing, laughter that came out of nowhere and left just as fast.

I learned early how to count heads without looking. How to listen for the right kind of quiet. How to tell the difference between play-fighting and the kind that would end in blood noses and apologies whispered into hair.

We made our own worlds back then.

The backyard was a battlefield, a jungle, a kingdom. I was always the leader — not because I wanted to be, but because no one else knew how to keep all of them alive at once. I assigned roles, settled disputes, patched scraped knees with tissues stolen from the bathroom and promises that it would stop hurting soon.

They believed me.

That's the part that still stings when I think about it — how completely they trusted me. How they handed me their fear like it was something I could carry for them.

At night, they would pile into my room when the house felt too loud or too empty. Five bodies, too many elbows, the smell of dirt and grass and whatever soap we were using that week. I'd read to them until my voice went hoarse, making up endings when the stories ran out.

"Again," they'd say.

"Just one more."

I never said no.

Mum was there, technically. In and out. A presence more than a constant. She drifted through rooms like weather — unpredictable, something you learned to brace for without ever really understanding. On good days, she smiled too brightly and promised things. On bad days, she disappeared into herself and left us to orbit the silence.

I learned not to ask questions.

The boys didn't notice the gaps the way I did. Or maybe they did, and just trusted me to fill them. I cooked when I could. I cleaned when it mattered. I learned how to sound confident when I wasn't.

Someone had to.

There was a summer — I remember this clearly — where everything felt almost normal. Sunburnt shoulders. Grass stains. The sound of them laughing as they chased each other down the street, barefoot and fearless.

I remember thinking, If this is all it ever is, I could live with that.

I didn't know then how fragile happiness is when it's built on silence. How quickly it collapses once the truth starts demanding space.

I didn't know that this was the last version of us that would exist.