My Town Exiles One Family Every Year To Stay “Perfect.” My Father Just Got A Promotion, And Now We Are Standing At The Border With Nothing. But Someone Is Waiting For Us In The Dark.

Family Reunion

My mother and Rosa started working together on a project that consumed all their energy. They were trying to raise money to transfer my sister from the facility near the old town to one closer to the exile community. The transfer would cost thousands of dollars we didn’t have, and insurance wouldn’t cover it.

Rosa made calls to every charity and aid organization she could find. My mother organized fundraisers within the exile community even though everyone here had almost nothing. I watched people who arrived with garbage bags of clothes donate $5 or $10 toward my sister’s transfer. Wallace gave $50 and said he wished someone had helped his wife get treatment. The generosity overwhelmed me because these people understood loss in ways that made them more willing to help, instead of less.

Over 6 weeks, my mother and Rosa navigated endless red tape and bureaucratic nightmares. Every form required three more forms. Every approval needed two more approvals. My mother cried from frustration multiple times, but Rosa kept pushing forward with the stubborn determination of someone who knew how to fight systems.

Finally, they got approval for the transfer and enough money to cover the costs. The facility near the exile community had an opening, and my sister would move there within the week. My mother broke down crying with relief when Rosa called to tell her. I hugged my mother and felt the weight she’d been carrying start to lift. We could actually visit my sister now instead of just making phone calls. She wouldn’t be alone and abandoned anymore.

Our first visit to the new facility was hard in ways I didn’t expect. My sister looked smaller and more fragile than I remembered. The medication made her movement slow and her eyes slightly unfocused. She was processing John’s exile and then our own disappearance, and she thought we abandoned her like everyone else did.

My mother held her and promised we’d visit twice a week and we’d never leave her again. My sister cried and asked why we didn’t come sooner. My mother explained about our own exile and the struggle to get her transferred.

My sister looked at me and asked if I was okay. Even broken and medicated, she was still trying to take care of me.

“I’m surviving,” I told her, and asked how she was doing.

She said the medication helped, but she still had bad days where she couldn’t stop thinking about John. She wanted to know if he was okay, and I had to admit I didn’t know where his family ended up.

The therapist joined us and explained my sister’s treatment plan and progress. She was stable but still fragile and needed consistent support. We promised to be there, and my sister grabbed my hand, asking me not to disappear again. I swore I wouldn’t, and meant it.

On the drive back, my mother was quiet but less tense than she’d been in months. My father said seeing my sister was hard but necessary. We were a family again, even if we were all damaged.

The Evidence

Van asked if I wanted to help with data entry for the FBI case, and I agreed immediately. The work involved organizing documents and testimony into searchable databases that prosecutors could use. Van showed me the system and explained how each entry needed to be tagged and cross-referenced.

I started reading through testimonies from exiled families, and the scale of cruelty became overwhelming. Every entry represented destroyed lives and stolen futures. I read about families torn apart and people who died because exile cut them off from medical care. The founding families had been doing this for 50 years, and the documentation proved systematic targeting of anyone who threatened their power.

I spent hours at the computer entering data and seeing patterns emerge. They exiled business competitors, whistleblowers, and anyone who questioned their authority. The randomness I’d always assumed was actually calculated destruction.

Van noticed me getting tense and told me to take breaks when I needed them. I asked how he stayed calm reading all this, and he said anger was useful but drowning in it wasn’t. He channeled his rage into precise documentation that would put the founding families in prison.

I tried to do the same, but some entries hit too hard. Reading about my best friend’s family and the Hendersons and John’s family made my hands shake. Van put his hand on my shoulder and said taking breaks wasn’t weakness. I stepped outside and Rodrigo found me sitting on the steps. He didn’t ask what was wrong, just sat next to me in silence. After a while, I went back inside and kept working because this mattered more than my comfort.