Chapter Three — The Weight of Home

Boarding school shaped Acacia first memories, but it was not her forever.

By the time she reached Class One, her days behind those cold walls were nearing an end. When she turned six, she left the hostel and returned home. For the first time, she could wake up in her own bed, surrounded by her family, with the smell of her mother’s cooking filling the mornings and the laughter of her elder sister beside her.

At first, it felt like happiness.

She was no longer the youngest boarder pitied by strangers. She belonged here, at home, with the people who should have been her safe haven.

But even before that return, another shift had entered her world. At the age of five, her youngest sister was born. Yet the baby was not really hers to grow up with. The little one was sent to live mostly with their maternal grandparents — her mother’s side, and often with her mother’s mother’s sister. For the girl, it was another quiet wound: even her own sister’s childhood slipped away from her hands. The bond she might have shared was kept at a distance, as though life itself was determined to deny her the warmth of belonging.

Still, she carried on.

But when she turned seven, shadows fell across her home. One morning, jewelry and money went missing from her mother’s possession. The loss was sharp, cutting deep into the family’s fragile peace. And in their anger, her parents turned on the two who were weakest — their elder daughters.

She and her sister were accused.

Accused of playing with things they could not even comprehend, accused of stealing, accused of dishonoring the family.

They pleaded innocence, but their words were drowned out by shouts. Their small bodies felt the sting of hands that should have been protective. They were beaten, punished for a crime they did not commit.

The true thief — her father’s brother’s wife — had been the one stealing in secret. She slipped through the house while her mother was awake, fingers curling around money and jewels that were not hers. But no one saw, no one believed — not at first.

Days of blame and punishment pressed down on the sisters until at last, truth clawed its way out. Neighbors had seen. Whispers became proof. The real culprit stood exposed.

And yet, the scars of that betrayal remained.

Because even when the truth came to light, the daughters’ pain was never fully acknowledged. Their parents brushed it aside, rejecting responsibility, claiming they had only acted out of grief and anger. But for two little girls, the lesson was unforgettable: even home was not safe.

At seven and eight years old, she learned that love could turn into violence, that trust could be broken by the very people meant to protect her.

But though the world kept pressing her down, she did not break.

Instead, she folded her pain deep inside, like a secret diary that no one else could read. Each wound, each injustice, was written in silence across her heart.

And without knowing it, those pages of sorrow were slowly shaping her into someone unshakable.

Let's see what fate brings her as she grows in the next chapter.

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