Get Out of My House
Those were the last words my father said to me before he shoved me into an October storm and locked the door behind me. “Get out of my house. I don’t need a sick daughter.” I was 15 years old. I had no coat, no phone, no money—just a school backpack with algebra homework inside, and rain already soaking through my sneakers.
Three hours later, the police called him. And when he heard what they said, his face went white as a ghost. But by then it was way too late.
I’m Sherry Walls. I’m 28 now, sitting in my Boston apartment, watching rain slide down the window. There’s a letter on my kitchen table, shaky handwriting on cheap nursing home stationery. After 13 years of silence, my father wants to see me. Says he’s dying. Says he’s sorry.
Funny thing about rain—it always takes me back to that night. October 14th, 2011.
I remember coming home from school like it was any other Tuesday. Backpack over one shoulder, head full of the algebra test I’d just aced. I was thinking about dinner, about homework, about normal 15-year-old stuff. I had no idea that in less than two hours, I’d be walking alone through a freezing storm, wondering if I was going to survive the night.
The moment I stepped through that front door, I knew something was wrong.
My father was standing in the living room looking like a volcano about to explode. His face was the color of raw meat. His hands were shaking, and he was holding a wad of cash in one fist and empty pill bottles in the other.
My sister Karen stood right behind him. She was 19, four years older than me, and she had this expression—concerned, worried, heartbroken—the perfect picture of a devoted older sister who’d just discovered something terrible. But I saw her eyes. I caught that little flicker she couldn’t quite hide.
Satisfaction.
Our stepmother, Jolene, hovered in the kitchen doorway, arms crossed, saying absolutely nothing. That was her specialty—saying nothing while bad things happened.
My father didn’t even let me put down my backpack. He started screaming. He said I’d been stealing from his wallet for months. He said I’d been buying pills, hiding them in my room. He said Karen had found the evidence: cash stuffed in my dresser, pill bottles in my closet, text messages proving I was talking to drug dealers.
The story doesn’t end here –
it continues on the next page.
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