They Said I Would Always Come Last—So I Stepped Away And Let Them Feel It

distant.

That evening, a text came through on my work phone—a number I’d made the mistake of giving my mother for “emergencies.”

Mrs. Jenkins next door says there’s screaming at your parents’ house. Police were called. Thought you should know.

I sat in my office, eating takeout sushi and drinking wine that no one had poured into a plant, and I felt nothing continue reading …