Jeffrey didn’t argue this time; he went upstairs and began throwing clothes into suitcases while the sound of his sobbing echoed down the hallway. Kimberly followed him, still screaming about how unfair it was that I had “everything” while they had “nothing.”
When the door finally slammed shut behind them, the silence that followed wasn’t peaceful yet; it was heavy with the wreckage of a broken family.
“I am so sorry I didn’t tell you sooner,” my mother said, hugging her arms around herself. “She told us you’d be embarrassed by us if we couldn’t handle the house on our own.”
“She lied to all of us, Mom,” I said, pulling both of them into a hug. “But she’s gone now, and the locks are being changed tomorrow morning.”
We sat by the fire that night, not saying much, just listening to the wood pop and crackle in the hearth. My father finally reclaimed his armchair, and my mother moved her favorite potted fern back to the kitchen windowsill where it belonged.