Then I looked at my son.
David didn’t move. He didn’t speak. He didn’t step between us.
He simply watched.
That silence hurt more than the slap ever could.
It had all begun less than half an hour earlier.
I’d been washing dishes when I saw his SUV pull into my driveway, packed to the roof like a cross-country move.
David climbed out first. He looked exhausted, hollowed out, like someone who hadn’t slept in weeks.
Chloe followed, clicking up my walkway in heels, dragging two oversized suitcases as if she were checking into a luxury hotel.
We sat in my living room—the same room where David once tore open birthday presents and fell asleep during movie nights.
That was where he told me.
They had sold their house.
The one on Oak Avenue.
The one I helped them buy with forty thousand dollars taken from my retirement savings.
