My dad saw me limping down our quiet street, my baby on my hip—no car, no help. He frowned. “Why are you walking? I bought you an SUV.” I looked at him, took a breath… and finally whispered the truth he was never meant to hear.

Not ask for the keys. Not smooth it over. Not sit at Patricia’s table while she played the victim and Derek stared at the floor. Get my things.

I looked at him. “My things?”

He held my gaze. “You and Evan are not staying here tonight.”

The words hit so hard I couldn’t think around them for a second. I had imagined leaving before, usually in small guilty flashes while I rocked Evan to sleep on the mattress in Derek’s old bedroom. But imagining was easy when it stayed vague. The second somebody said it out loud, leaving became real. Real meant frightening. Real meant money. Real meant admitting just how bad things had gotten.

Dad must have seen panic cross my face, because his voice softened. “You don’t have to decide the next five years tonight,” he said. “You just have to decide this one.”