died and my father remarried Patricia. I just wanted to get through the day quietly, go to school, come home, count down the weeks until
graduation when I could finally leave that house forever.
I turned eighteen on a Tuesday. No cake. No card. Not even a half-hearted “happy birthday.” Just my father sitting at the kitchen table, his wife stirring sugar into her mug, and my stepbrother leaning back in his chair with that look people get when they already know how the story ends.
