That was when I knew Sunday dinner could not be postponed, softened, or handled privately anymore.
If I kept this in the shadows, my parents would do what they had always done.
They would rearrange the facts, minimize the damage, blame my tone, blame stress, blame misunderstanding, blame literally anything except themselves.
By four o’clock, I was dressed, Lily was in a soft blue sweater, and my anger had cooled into something steadier and more dangerous.
Resolve.
The drive to my parents’ house took thirty minutes.
Lily sat in the back seat with her stuffed rabbit in her lap, staring out at wet trees and driveways still shining from yesterday’s storm.
Halfway there, she asked, “Do I have to go inside?”
I met her eyes in the rearview mirror.
“You do not have to do anything you don’t want to do.”
She twisted one of the rabbit’s ears.
“Can I stay close to you?”
“You’re staying with me the whole time.”
She nodded and leaned her head against the window.
My parents’ house stood exactly as it always had, with the trimmed hedges and painted shutters that made strangers think warmth lived inside.
Three cars were already in the driveway.
My father’s sedan.
Miranda’s SUV.
And the leased van I had been paying for.
Seeing that van there tightened something in my chest, not because of the money, but because I suddenly saw it for what it was.
A monument to my own complicity.
I parked at the curb and sat for a second with both hands on the wheel.
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