That is what I remember most clearly—not the command itself, but the waiting after it. The ridiculous, doomed belief that someone would stop him. That Diane would say Richard, no, let’s calm down. That Bianca would lose her nerve. That my father would hear himself and correct course.
No one did.
“Dad—”
“Now.”
He didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t need to. Finality can be spoken softly.
I looked at Diane.
She lowered her eyes.
I looked at Bianca.
She was still crying, but there was something glittering beneath it now. Triumph, bright and ugly and unmistakable.
So I stood up.
My chair scraped against the floor. The sound seemed too loud in the room.
I went upstairs, packed a duffel bag with whatever I could grab in under five minutes, came back down, and paused once in the hall because part of me still believed—stupidly, stubbornly—that my father would follow.
He didn’t.
When I opened the front door, rain blew in across the threshold.
I walked out carrying my bag and an umbrella with a broken spoke.
No one stopped me.
That was sixteen.