Four years ago, when I was thirteen and my brother was eighteen, we still lived with our father.

Our mother left us when I was three. I don’t remember much about her besides the fact that she was an English teacher. Our father never talked about her, but over the years, I gradually came to understand that she went to the United States because she had fallen in love with another man. She had fallen in love with someone who was not my father.

She had left because of love, but my father believed it was because he did not make enough money.

Before my mother left, our family was poor. My father worked in an investment firm, but in the ten years he worked there, he was never given a raise or a promotion. My mother stopped teaching English after she gave birth to me, and so our family lived off my father’s meagre earnings. We hadn’t lived in poverty, but there had never been enough money for extravagant anniversary gifts or birthday presents. The only restaurants we had ever eaten at were fast food restaurants. My brother and I didn’t go to academies like the other children. Still, my brother and I hadn’t been particularly miserable; young as we were, we didn’t really need too much to keep us occupied. We had our imaginations, after all. We had friends, and we had each other. We had our parents.

It was different for my mother. She had taught high school students, and so she was not used to dealing with young children. Our family could not afford a nanny, and there were no grandparents to look after my brother and me. So the responsibility fell to my overwhelmed mother. She had gone through the ordeal of raising a child once with my brother, and she had to go through it again with me. It was not her fault that she was not housewife material; she just loved her career.

She was unhappy in her life with us. It wasn’t her fault any more than it was my father’s or my brother’s or mine. It was just the way life turned out for our family.

I don’t know how she met the person she fell in love with. She might have met him while shopping for groceries. She might have met him when she took me to the playground.

It mattered very little to me how she met him. The only thing that mattered was that she left and never looked back. She was too ashamed to do that.

I think I would have forgiven her if she had stayed in touch. If she had called every once in a while. But she never called and never visited.

So I never forgave her.

Life went on as normally as it possibly could have for the next few years. We pretended my mother had never existed. We were good at pretending. My brother and I grew older and quieter. There were many first dates for my father, but never a second. We found some happiness in little things. Life was not terrible.

Then, my father lost his job and he did not try to find another one. He was strangely happy about that. It was a chance, he’d said. A chance for him to do something with his life. He set up his own investment firm. Did some advertising in the newspaper and online.

In a matter of months, he had earned more money than he had in three years.

My brother and I did not know then, what he was doing.

We pretended not to know.

I think we really did know.