My father never wanted daughters—he made that painfully clear from the beginning. I was five when I first understood that his love didn’t extend to me or my three younger sisters. He didn’t yell or scowl; he just looked at us like we were mistakes he couldn’t send back. My name is Hannah, the eldest of four girls—Rachel, Lily, and Ava followed. To him, we were disappointments, one after another. What he wanted was a son, and we weren’t enough.

Instead of raising us, Dad began dropping us off with our grandmother, one by one, using excuses and silence. I was the first, then Rachel, then Lily, and finally Ava. He never said it outright, but his actions screamed it: we didn’t count. Grandma Louise, gentle and loving, took us in. She baked cookies when we were sick and made sure each birthday was celebrated with a homemade cake. She didn’t fight Dad for custody—she was scared he’d cut ties completely.

Our mother didn’t stop him either. Worn down by life and too young when she married, she followed orders rather than instincts. I don’t think she hated us—she just didn’t want us.

We grew up with Grandma, mostly forgotten. Birthday cards would arrive with hollow messages signed, “Love, Mom and Dad.” No calls, no visits—until the day they had a son. I was nine when I heard the phone call—Mom’s voice thrilled as she announced the birth of Benjamin. A week later, they arrived uninvited, not to see us, but to introduce their precious boy. Dressed in designer clothes with a silver engraved rattle, he was everything they’d been waiting for. And we, the daughters they discarded, stood on the sidelines like spectators.

Years passed. They disappeared again, this time for good—or so we thought.

When I was seventeen, a lawyer knocked on Grandma’s door. He was looking for the descendants of her ex-husband, Henry—our grandfather. We’d never met him. He’d left decades ago but had since become successful, building a business, amassing wealth, and now, facing the end of his life. The estate was to be divided among his direct grandchildren. Grandma gave our names without a second thought.

What she didn’t realize was that Dad had been snooping through her mail. The word “inheritance” was all he needed. Weeks later, he and Mom arrived out of nowhere with forced smiles and a moving truck. “We want to reconnect,” they said. Grandma stood stunned. We were packed up that very night.

At their house, we were strangers. My room had been converted into Benjamin’s playroom. We slept on couches and floors, treated like burdens. Benjamin, now seven, called us “girl-servants.” Mom and Dad ignored us unless they needed something cleaned. We were just chess pieces in Dad’s scheme to claim our share of the inheritance.

I endured three weeks of it—three weeks of chores, insults, and being treated like we owed them something. Then, early one morning, I packed a bag, kissed my sisters goodbye, and walked six miles to Henry’s house. I had stolen his address from one of the letters Dad had taken.

Henry, frail and surprised, answered the door in a robe and slippers. He knew exactly who I was. He welcomed me in without hesitation. I told him everything—how we’d been abandoned, how Dad only returned because of the money. I didn’t cry until I told him Ava had started calling herself “the spare girl.”

Henry was quiet for a long time before finally saying, “I left because I thought your grandmother would be better off. But I was wrong. I’m not letting him break you girls.”

He called Grandma that day. They hadn’t spoken in over twenty years. But when she answered, she didn’t hesitate. “If you’re ready to help,” she said, “help me fight.”

And he did.

His niece Erica was a lawyer with a reputation for being fierce—and a personal grudge against Dad from high school. Together, we filed for guardianship. We collected evidence of neglect, abandonment, and emotional abuse. Erica even found an old message where Dad referred to us as “financial deadweight.”

The custody battle took months. Dad and Mom tried everything—they claimed we were brainwashed, said I’d been kidnapped. But the judge and the child advocate saw through it all. In the end, legal custody was granted to Grandma.

As for the inheritance? Henry rewrote the will himself, every word deliberate. Everything went to us girls. Not a single cent to Dad, Mom, or Benjamin.

“You earned it,” he told us. “All of it.”

When Dad found out, he exploded—angry calls, vicious messages, and then… silence. Mom stopped calling too. And Benjamin, the little king, was left in his castle alone.

We returned to Grandma’s house, the only place that had ever felt like home. Henry spent his final two years making up for lost time—fishing with Lily, building birdhouses with Rachel, reading with Ava, and buying me my first camera. He was there, fully present, until his last breath.

Just before he passed, he squeezed my hand and whispered, “I should’ve come back sooner. But I’m glad I did something right in the end.”

And so am I.