Then my stepbrother, Travis, leaning back in his chair, watching me with that mean little look he gets when he thinks he has me cornered.
Then me.
I’m leaving.
I hear it again, my own voice in my head, thinner than I wanted, but steady enough.
I’m leaving.
I had my keys in my hand. My bag on my shoulder. My chest so tight it hurt, but I said it anyway.
At first Travis laughed.
Earl did not.
He just looked at me over the neck of the bottle, quiet in the way that always meant something bad was coming.
“Where you gonna go?”
“I’ll figure it out.”
I meant that too.
I was done.
After two years of double shifts at the gas station, bills that should never have been mine, and cleaning up after two grown men who acted like I was lucky to be there, I had looked at both of them and said I was done. Done being the maid. Done being the wallet. Done living in a house that stopped feeling like home the day my mother died.
Travis stood up slow.
“Sit down, Julie.”
“I’m not sitting down.”
“Then stop shaking long enough to make sense.”
“I make perfect sense.”
My grip tightened on my keys. Earl just watched from the table, one hand around his bottle, saying nothing. That was worse. Earl loud was ugly. Earl quiet meant he was thinking.
“I’m leaving,” I said again.
Travis let out a breath like I was exhausting him. Then he turned, grabbed a bottle of orange juice from the fridge, and poured some into a glass.
“You’re worked up,” he said. “Here.”
I stared at it.
“I don’t want anything from you.”
“It’s juice, Julie, not poison.” His mouth twitched. “Take it or don’t. Makes no difference to me.”
My throat was dry from my shift, from yelling, from trying not to cry in front of them. I hated that he could see it. I hated that he was standing there acting almost normal, like this was just another ugly fight in that kitchen and not the moment I finally walked out.
“Take it,” Earl said from the table, quiet and flat. “Then go, if that’s what you’re so set on.”
That was what did it.
Because for one stupid second, I thought maybe they were letting me.
