She took a deep breath and stepped into the water. It was cold, but it no longer felt like a grave. It felt like a baptism.
She had spent her life protecting them from the world, only to realize she needed to protect the world—and herself—from them. As she kicked her legs and felt the water support her, she smiled. She had lost a family of monsters, but she had finally found her soul.
The reality of their new life hit like the cold lake water they had joked about. Without the “silent bank” of the grandmother’s generosity, the thin veneer of their upper-middle-class existence stripped away in less than seven days.
The cramped two-bedroom rental was located above a noisy laundromat in a part of the city David used to call “the sticks.”
David sat at a folding card table, staring at a stack of eviction notices from their previous luxury apartment and several maxed-out credit card statements. For years, his mother had quietly paid the “overages” he accrued. Now, the math simply didn’t work.
