Helena stood closest to the gate, one hand on her hip, the other gripping her oversized burgundy purse as if it gave her authority. Daniel kept checking his phone, then the house, then his relatives, already sweating through the shirt I used to press for him before I stopped doing anything for him at all.
Behind them, two nieces struggled with gold balloons, an uncle balanced a tray of food, and a cousin stood by the car holding a folding table as if he were about to set up camp on land they had already claimed in their minds.
When I told him to put me on speaker, the noise outside shifted. The murmuring stopped. The balloons went still. Even the cousin with the portable speaker lowered it.
Silence dropped over them so fast it almost looked choreographed. And for the first time that morning, Daniel’s face stopped pretending to be confused and started showing fear.
“No one is coming into my house,” I said, calm enough to surprise even myself, “because today your whole family is going to hear exactly why you and your mother were so desperate to get inside.”