“I know,” I whispered. “I know I should’ve told you.”
“She lied to us, Nika,” Angela hissed, turning to her sister like I wasn’t standing right there. Then she called the driver. “Take everything to the old address — she knows it.”
“Girls, please…”
The front door closed. The lock turned, and the sound landed hard in my chest.
“Take everything to the old address — she knows it.”
The driver avoided my eyes as he climbed into the cab. The truck rolled down the street as the rain fell harder.
I stood on that front step, completely alone, until my legs finally carried me to my car.
***
My old house smelled like dust and years of a life I’d built from nothing.
I turned on the kitchen light and stood in the middle of the room where I’d helped my daughters with homework, made birthday cakes from scratch, and sat up past midnight waiting to hear the sound of the front door when they came home from their first college parties.
Every corner of that kitchen held a memory I hadn’t asked to be flooded with.
I stood on that front step, completely alone.
The silence in that house was the loneliest sound I’d ever heard in my life.
I sat at the table and didn’t try to stop the tears. I let the regret come in fully, without softening it. I should’ve told them when they were old enough to understand. I’d had years of chances.
But I’d chosen silence every single time, and I’d called it protection.
It wasn’t protection. It was fear wearing a better name.
I couldn’t undo it. But I could still do one thing.
I got back in my car because I’d spent 20 years hiding a name, and it was time I faced it.
