My parents kicked me out one day after my C-section—with my newborn in my arms. Then my husband pulled up, looked at my face, and made one phone call that changed everything.

Wendy looked toward the hall as if some neutral witness might appear and correct reality. Instead Philip’s voice floated up from downstairs over the television. “Please get her out of here, Suzanne. The sight of her clutching her stomach is making me uncomfortable. It’s depressing.”

That word landed harder than the hair pulling.

Depressing.

Not serious. Not cruel. Not alarming.

Just aesthetically inconvenient.

Wendy stared at the doorway and understood, with a clarity so cold it almost felt like calm, that no sentence would save her. No appeal to kindness. No reminder of surgery. No invocation of family. Nothing. The decision had been made before she woke up. Cheryl mattered. Wendy obstructed.

So she did the only thing left that preserved any scrap of control.

She obeyed.