My mother was behind him in the doorway, clutching my brother Dylan’s arm so tightly that her knuckles had gone white. Dylan looked like he might be sick. His girlfriend Victoria hovered at his shoulder in the expensive oversized sweater she had worn to breakfast, her lips parted, her eyes moving from me to the packed boxes to the papers on my desk as if she had walked into a room and found a body.
In a way, she had.
The body was my old life.
Two suitcases stood open on the floor, half-zipped. My duffel bag sat beside my bed with my laptop case tucked against it. The shelves that had held twenty-two years of small, ignored trophies and certificates were empty. My closet was stripped down to wire hangers. On my desk, arranged exactly where I wanted them, were three printed documents.
The first was my acceptance letter to Johns Hopkins University.
The second was the full scholarship confirmation.
The third was my lease for a small apartment in Baltimore, along with my signed offer for a part-time research job at a pharmaceutical technology firm.
My father had always believed money was the final leash. If I stepped out of line, he could tug. If I talked back, he could threaten tuition. If I embarrassed the family, he could remind me who paid for my roof and my degree. Just twenty-four hours earlier, at our family dinner downstairs, he had used that exact threat.
