For 8 years, my parents made me leave the house every time my brother brought his fiance over; Mom said, “She comes from a good family, don’t embarrass us”; Dad added, “Just disappear for the weekend”; I did; then one weekend, I never came back; it took them four years to find out where I went.
My mother called what happened “your situation,” like it was a stain she hoped nobody would notice.
Two days before the first Easter visit, I came into the hallway and noticed six family pictures missing from the wall.
Mom said the frames were being updated.
The only photo of me left was my junior-year portrait, centered on the living-room shelf beside a white candle.
“It’s for Easter,” she said.
As she spoke, she quietly slid my seven-day pill organizer from beside the toaster into the silverware drawer.
“Mitch is bringing someone home this weekend. Her name is Avery Lockheart. Her people are Mountain Brook.”
Mountain Brook was twenty minutes from Hoover, but to Mom it might as well have been another country.
“That family has been through a terrible loss,” she added. “They don’t need to walk into ours.”
I thought she meant me.
She did.
Mitch came home from Tuscaloosa Friday night. He was twenty, studying engineering at Alabama, and still the only person who called me Stace.
He stood in my doorway while I packed a duffel bag.
“I’m sorry about all this, Stace.”
I assumed he meant our parents.
“Sorry for what?”
But he had already walked away.
The next morning, Dad placed my keys beside the sink. At 10:59, I backed out.
What happened next changed everything… FULL STORY on the next page.
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