The fourth: a call from my father’s employer requesting a meeting “effective immediately.” Their world, built on the assumption that I would always be too soft to fight back, began to wobble. Chaos isn’t always loud at first. Sometimes it starts in the eyes.
My mother’s eyes went searching—calculating, pleading, furious—looking for the old me. The son who would cave if she cried hard enough. Shell’s eyes flicked toward the driveway, toward the cars, as if she could physically hold them in place with panic.
My father’s eyes did something I’d never seen before: they looked… small. They turned and saw me standing at the edge of the lawn. My father’s voice cracked into a roar, sudden and desperate.
“You ungrateful—after everything we did for you!”
Shell lunged forward, pointing as if she could stab me with a finger. “You’re ruining our lives!”
My mother’s face contorted into a sob so practiced it could’ve been an audition. “Please,” she cried, stepping toward me.
“We’re family.”
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