I trusted my daughters to watch their sick little brother for just two hours while I handled a work emergency. When he texted me begging to come home, I knew something was terribly wrong. What I discovered when I rushed back made me question everything I thought I knew about my daughters.

I never thought I would be choosing between my children.

Let me back up.

I am a 45-year-old mother of three. My daughters Kyra and Mattie are both in their 20s now. They’re fresh out of college with degrees they cannot seem to use.

They moved back home five months ago after their apartment lease fell through and the job market chewed them up and spit them out.

Then there is Jacob, my seven-year-old son. He turned out to be the light of my life in ways I did not know were possible until he came along.

The girls are from my first marriage. Their father and I divorced 12 years ago, and honestly, it was not pretty.

He painted me as the villain in their story, and for years, they believed him. They chose to live with him after the split.

I saw them on weekends and holidays, always feeling like a guest in my own daughters’ lives.

Four years after the divorce, I met William.

He was kind and patient and everything I needed after years of feeling like I was not enough. We got married, and a year later, Jacob was born. William loved that boy with everything he had.

But my daughters?

They never gave William a chance. Their father made sure of that. He filled their heads with lies about why our marriage ended, who William was, and what kind of “selfish” mother I had become.

The girls were polite when they visited, but cold and distant. They tolerated William because they had to, not because they wanted to.

When they went off to college, their father paid their rent. It was the one thing he did consistently.

But last year, he remarried his colleague. His new wife did not like my daughters one bit. The fighting started almost immediately, and he stopped paying their rent within months.

That is when they called me.

“Mom, we need help,” Kyra had said over the phone, her voice small in a way I had not heard since she was little.

“Dad cut us off. We cannot afford the apartment anymore, and we do not have jobs yet. Can we stay with you?

Just until we get on our feet?”

What was I supposed to say? They were my daughters. So I said yes, despite my own heartbreak concerning William’s declining health.