Then I shut the door.
And locked it.
Inside, Noah sat on the couch and looked around the room.
“This feels weird,” he said.
“Yeah.”
He glanced around again. “Is it ours now?”
I nodded.
He smiled slowly. “Can we get pizza?”
I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding.
“Yeah,” I said. “We can get pizza.”
And for the first time since I came home, the quiet in that house didn’t hurt.
The first night after they were gone, I didn’t sleep.
Not because I was angry.
Not because I felt triumphant.
Just because that kind of silence takes getting used to when you’ve lived too long inside noise you couldn’t control.
No footsteps overhead.
No television roaring through the walls.
No Madison shouting into speakerphone like the whole world needed to hear her.
Just space.
Noah fell asleep on the couch with cartoons playing softly. I sat by the window in my wheelchair and watched the driveway, waiting for sirens, headlights, pounding fists—something.
Nothing came.
That was when I understood what I had really done.
Not revenge.
Not justice.
Control.
For the first time in my life, I wasn’t reacting to somebody else’s choices.
I was the choice.