“You don’t need to.”
“That’s not what I said,” Nora replied.
Mom looked at me for backup. “You’ve handled enough,” I said. “We’re going.”
She looked exhausted, but something shifted that day.
Soon after, she took a part-time job at a catering company run by Mrs. Alvarez from church. At first, she called it temporary. But within a month, Mrs. Alvarez asked her to oversee a wedding reception. “Nobody keeps a kitchen moving like you do, Kayla,” she said.
Mom hung up the phone looking stunned.
She started changing—not in the way Dad accused her of, but in ways that mattered. She cut her hair to her shoulders. Bought new shoes. Laughed more.
We still heard about Dad through his sister, Lydia—the only one on his side who didn’t pretend we’d imagined what he did.
“That man has always cared more about looking successful than being it,” she muttered one Sunday. “Don’t believe the pictures he shares on Instagram.”
We had already stopped looking. Even Nora had blocked him.
