My mother threw scalding soup in my face for saying no to her stepdaughter. “Give her all your things — or get out!”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”

Then I walked out before either of them could stop me.

Outside, I sat inside my car for ten full minutes watching the house through the windshield.

My house.

The home Dad built before cancer turned him quiet and thin. The home where he taught me to read contracts at twelve years old because he always said, “People who understand continue reading …