That Thanksgiving ended that belief.
My father stood up from the table, walked to the front hall closet, took out my coat, and came back.
“Get out,” he said. “Both of you. We are done dealing with your mistake.”
Leo started to cry.
When Richard tossed my coat at me, I caught it.
“Are you sure?” I asked him quietly.
“Completely.”
My mother glanced toward the staircase. “Natalie and Terrence need your old bedroom anyway. They’re staying with us for a while.”
I didn’t argue. I knew exactly how an argument would go. Richard would get louder, Patricia would get quieter and colder, and Leo would remember every second of it for the rest of his life.
So I picked up my son’s coat, took his hand, and walked out into the snow.
Behind me, the deadbolt clicked.
In the SUV, I turned the heater up as high as it would go. Leo held both hands toward the vents. His little knitted hat, a blue one with a pom-pom that my best friend Maya had made him, had slipped sideways over one ear, and he wouldn’t let me fix it.
“Are Grandma and Grandpa mad forever?” he asked.
I wanted to promise him they weren’t. I couldn’t.
“I’m here,” I said instead. “And we’re going somewhere warm.”
He got quiet and watched the house through the windshield. I watched it too.
Upstairs, a light came on in my old bedroom, the room where I’d done my homework and cried over boys and stayed up until three in the morning building my first website at sixteen. Through the window, I could see Natalie walking around in there.
She was already settling in.
I reached for my phone.
To understand what I did next, you need to know what happened four years ago.
Four years ago, Richard and Patricia Barrett nearly lost everything.
