“You cost yourselves,” I said.
He hung up.
After that, the fallout arrived in pieces.
The house went on the market in January. My mother moved into a condo owned by one of her sisters. My father rented an apartment near his office, though rumors said the office itself might not survive the year. Grant’s girlfriend, Paige, disappeared from his social media the week after the restaurant closed.
I started college in the spring instead of the fall. I chose Northwestern because it was close enough to my apartment and far enough from the girl I used to be. I studied economics first because I wanted to understand every word people had once used to confuse me. Later, I added public policy because numbers explained systems, but policy explained who became trapped inside them.
I did not become fearless. That would be a lie.
There were nights I stood in my kitchen holding my phone, tempted to call my mother just to hear her voice. There were mornings when I missed the illusion of family so badly it felt physical. I missed birthday breakfasts, even though I now knew they had been staged. I missed Christmas photographs, even though everyone in them had been posing.
