Sacrifice?

I stand on the doorstep to my childhood home, wondering if they'll let me in. I count the seconds from when I rang the doorbell; it's been one hundred and thirty-seven so far. If it wasn't for the warm light spilling from their window, I'd wonder if they were even home. But no, they're here.

The stone front of our Boston home, the familiar concrete steps leading up from the sidewalk to our door, all of it tied to a million memories. I used to pound up these steps when I was a kid, bouncing on the balls of my feet, excited to be done with school. Mother would embrace me, father would lightly reprimand me for tracking mud into the house, and Helen, my little sister, would greet me with a barrel hug that nearly took me off my feet more times than not.

I sigh softly, my warm breath mixing visibly with the chilly autumn air. I'm grateful for my long, warm pea coat and maroon scarf. My new leather gloves crinkle as I tighten my hold around the casserole dish in my hands. Just remembering our family, our Helen, back when it was full of life… I don't understand why they can't see all the good she did.

It's been another fifty-six seconds.

Maybe I should go. They clearly don't want me here. It's been over a year with no returned phone calls, no texts, no e-mails. Hell, I would've settled for a message by morse code, but nothing. Maybe this is the only closure I'm going to get. Being left to stand outside on Thanksgiving, my offering rapidly losing heat as I'm ignored by my family.

"I guess that's it then." I kneel down, about to place the casserole dish I brought on the welcome mat, a last attempt at repairing the fracture of our family. But as I do so, the door cracks open just a tiny bit.

"Matt?"

I look up, a woman with extra weight plumping her over all figure, yet never blocking her beauty, which has always shone from her eyes. The crow’s feet marked deep in her skin a sign of her easy laugh and faster smile. But she isn't smiling now. Instead, her entire body is tense as she looks down at me, her lips in a hard thin line of distrust.

"Mom." I swallow the raw emotion trying to claw up my throat at hearing her voice for the first time in so long. "How are you? Can I come in?" I stand hesitantly excited, wondering what caused this change, this olive branch of trust, hoping to finally be able to get her to understand everything, to solve this rift that's formed between us.

She stiffens but doesn't close the door. "What are you doing here?" She asks, not acknowledging either of my questions.

"It's Thanksgiving," I nod to the peace offering I brought, "I was hoping we could sit down, share a meal, you know…" I pause, "Be a family."

Her eyes widen in shock, her mouth curving into an O of surprise, "You…"

"Oh, that is rich," my father's unamused drawl is quickly followed by one of his meaty palms gripping the door from behind my mother, before wrenching it fully open. The man is as tall as me, but with a gut spilling over his buckled jeans that could have been avoided with healthy eating and exercise. He pushes his wife aside without looking at her once and storms forward. "Come to celebrate with your down-on-their-luck little family?" His eyes are rimmed red, and his speech is slurred.

"You don't have to stay in this house, you don't have to be down on your luck, you can come—"

"With you?" He says in disgust, "Like hell." He pulls his arm back, but by the time he's swinging at me, I've taken a step back and to the side, avoiding him while still keeping the ceramic casserole dish and its covering of tin foil, unruffled in my hands. I'm not a fighter by any means. Dad's just slow.

Dad falters, but catches himself, though with the energy of his swing, he stumbles down the front porch steps, landing clunkyly on the sidewalk, but still on his feet.

"I didn't come to cause problems."

"Then why did you come?" Mom repeats her question from before.

"To see you," I say, taking a step back to her, "and you," I turn to Dad. To talk about Helen, about everything we've learned, the medical advances she—"

"We don't want to hear it," Dad snaps.

"Really? I—" I take a breath, stopping myself from listing the same facts I've told them countless times before. Hundreds of thousands of threatened lives saved. Millions of dollars now diverted to ending world hunger. Not to mention the entire creation of a new science that holds more potential than the last ten decades combined for research advancement.

"Matt," my mom says softly, and I turn again, hoping for an ally. During the last months my family still spoke to me, it was only Dad who answered the phone, all of which were just yelling matches as he blamed me for 'stealing' his daughter away from him. But he never gave me a second to explain. Instead content to just keep screaming at me.

"I… "Mom takes a deep breath, as if preparing herself for something, some big reveal. I know whatever it is, it's going to save us. She'll understand, she'll accept to listen, she'll come to the institute and see all the good work we've done.

"Do you see what you've done?" Dad slurs, as he takes one step back towards us, "You've ruined your mother."

"Maybe let her speak for herself," I spit back. "What is it, Mom?" I ask, stepping closer, she'll understand. She has to, what Helen did, it saved lives.

She looks up at me, light there for a moment, before she turns her eyes downcast. "Just go."

"What?" I take a step back, hurt ricocheting through me. "No." I shake my head, "No this is my family home—"

"Not anymore," she says, her spine straightening a bit. "You turned your back on this family."

"I— What?" I yell. "How did I turn—?" So much anger courses through me, I can't even finish a sentence, let alone a complete thought. "Turned my back? I did everything Helen asked of me. I helped her. To the very end, I was by her side."

Pain floods my face as Dad's fist connects with my jaw. A momentary ringing fills my ears, and my loss of balance makes me shuffle back against the cold iron handrail. The tinfoil of the casserole is knocked askew, and an ill-timed wind picks it up and twirls it away. The feeble scent of barely warm apples, cherries, and cinnamon attempts to fill the space. But neither of my parents need to smell the food to be able to identify Helen's favorite Thanksgiving 'self-discovered' dish, apple strudel topped with maraschino cherries.

When she was ten, Helen proudly declared to the family it as her own original recipe. I told her that adding maraschino cherries to existing apple strudel didn't really make it original, but she insisted throughout the dinner that it did, and thus a tradition was born.

"And you said you didn't want to start a fight." My Dad takes another swing at me. But this time I duck.

"I loved her too, more than any of you!" My anger beginning to overturn the calm intention I'd come here with. They think I turned my back on them. They turned their backs on her. "I don't remember either of you being by her side when she was struggling to breathe, when her knees collapsed, or when the heartbeat monitor went silent." Tears are gathering at the edges of my eyes as I remember that day.

"No!" My dad screams. "Her family loved her."

"I'm her brother, what does that make me?" I push back.

"Her betrayer," Mom says softly from the door.

"Mom?" I ask stunned, her words dumping a bucket of ice water on both my father and I. I look between them and see that that's truly how they see me. I let out a breath. How do I make them see? "I only—"

"Only what?" She cuts me off. "You only wanted to make the world a better place? Wanted to help heal thousands upon thousands of the injured. Wanted to save the starving." She lists off our lofty goals so flippantly my blood boils again.

"Yes!" I scream. "Yes, I wanted that. I admit that easily, and might I remind you, so did she."

"She never would have disappeared into that institute if you didn't build it up in her head like it was some god-damn perfect place." Dad shoots back.

"But it worked," I face them, ignoring the swelling in my cheek from the one good hit my dad got in. "She saved lives, she's still saving them even now. Helen, not me, she did that."

"She's not saving anyone, Matthew." Another voice joins in, and just like that, grandmother is standing behind my mom, her regal air as powerful as ever, and her eyes laser-focused on me. "She's dead."

"She might be, but her DNA, her gift, it's still giving."

"You killed your only sister for her DNA." Grandmother sneers. "She showed you her gift, and in return, you turned her over to the science monkeys in the lab. You sold her like a thing."

"What? No. That's not what happened." This, this is the biggest part of everything they don't understand. "I would never do that."

"No?" Grandmother raises a grey eyebrow at me, her gaze taking in my expensive long coat, leather gloves, and sharp shoes. "Where'd all that come from then?"

"We both were given a stipend; we were well taken care of. She had all of this too." I gesture to my clothes, "and if you came with me, you could have it. All of you," I circle including everyone in my declaration, "You would be treated with such respect to be a member of Helen's family. If you—"

"Then how come we only ever heard from you, never her?" Mom asks, again cutting me off.

I look to her, trying to figure out what's happening between her and Dad. She answered the door with such meekness, Dad barreling in with half-cocked boxing moves. And now they seem to have switched. She's standing with her back straight, and the support of her own mother beside her, and Dad is looking like he's about to pass out from the exertion of moving. I don't know who has the power in their dynamic, and right now I don't really care.

"Helen was busy, I wasn't. I wasn't—I'm not important, she was the miracle, not me."

"She wasn't your miracle to do with whatever you wanted, she wasn't a thing," Mom shouts.

A thing, the word, the implication of it digs into my chest. "How could you believe I think—"

"You had that job at the institute," Dad says, lumbering past me, attempting to place himself between me and the women of our family. "She went with you because you told her to. She followed you there, and that day," he breaths deeply trying to steady himself, "that was the last day we ever heard our baby girl's voice."

"You really think I had that much control of her?" I ask in disbelief. "That she just went in there blindly."

"She loved you," Mom states as the reason.

"She loved you too," I push back.

"She went because you asked her."

The familiar scratching sound of wind rustling leaves fills the space as the truth settles over me. The truth of what they think of my sister, their daughter and granddaughter.

"Do you truly think so little of her?" I ask softly.

"How dare you!" Dad attempts another swing, but his breathing is more labored than before, and even if I hadn't moved, he wouldn't have made contact.

"No. Seriously. Own what you just said. Own how you see her!" I shout. Pure rage floods me. "You think she was some naïve puppy I led to slaughter? That everything she did was because I what? Sold her for status?" I spit at their feet. "Everything she's done for us, not just this city or country, but the whole fucking world. What she's done is amazing. What she could do was amazing. All you three wanted to do was keep her locked up here so she could only ever help the four of us." I shake my head at them. "Fuck you. She wanted to save the world, and you can't stand that, so you've concocted some false idea of me being some mustache-twirling villain to make yourselves feel better. And if that's what helps you sleep at night, so be it."

I lean down and place Helen's dish at their feet. I stand slowly, shoulders back, making eye contact with each of them in turn, commanding their respect. "But I hope someday, you can see who Helen actually was. Because she was never the victim of this story. She was the hero."

With the last words I'll ever speak to my parents done, I turn on my heels and leave.