Chapter 7: Weeks Without Their Keys
The incision healed in the expected arc. Lily’s questions about Vanessa slowed, then shifted into the past tense.
I measured progress in ordinary units: full nights of sleep, a school pickup line with no unauthorized adults, a Saturday thunderstorm that sent Lily into my lap with the fox but not into panic about being moved. Daniel handled the physical tasks I still moved carefully around. Rachel checked in without turning our doorway into a command post. Helen’s updates became less frequent—only when the family attempted a new channel or when a deadline on the old guarantee paperwork fully expired.
My parents tried one letter, handwritten, heavy with disappointment and light on accountability. Helen received it, scanned it, and asked whether I wanted a response. I did not. Vanessa’s boutique found other funding or didn’t; either way, the story ceased to arrive at my address. The family group chat, from the fragments that still reached Daniel through a cousin, had begun to narrate me as the aggressor. I let the narration run where I couldn’t hear it. Lily’s world was quieter without it.
