We ended up in a small coastal town three hours away, the kind of place we used to pass on the highway without noticing. I rented a faded two-bedroom apartment above a laundromat and took a part-time job at a bakery that didn’t belong to anyone in my family.
The air smelled like sugar and ocean instead of bleach and anxiety.
The first week, Liam asked every night when Grandma and Aunt Vanessa were coming to visit. My throat tightened each time. “Not for a while,” I said. “We’re giving everybody some space.” I didn’t mention that I’d changed my number and blocked half my contacts the night we left.
Starting over felt like learning to walk again. I enrolled Liam at the local elementary school and watched him stand at the edge of the playground, fingers hooked around his backpack straps. I almost turned around and begged my mother to forgive me just so he wouldn’t have to be the new kid.
Then a boy in a Minecraft hoodie jogged up, said something I couldn’t hear, and they took off toward the swings together. Liam glanced back once, grinned and waved. The knot in my chest loosened.
At the bakery, my boss Rosa paid me overtime when I stayed late and apologized if she asked for extra help. “If it’s too much, say no,” she kept insisting, eyebrows knitted with concern. The first time she said it, I had to turn away and pretend to reorganize the napkins because my eyes were burning. In my old life, saying no had been the same as betrayal.
We celebrated Liam’s ninth birthday in a park by the harbor.
I spent the night before rolling pizza dough and frosting cupcakes—not because anyone demanded it, but because I wanted to. Liam invited kids from school, the twin girls from the apartment downstairs, even the mail carrier’s daughter. Rosa came with a ridiculous chocolate cake, and the other parents dragged over folding chairs like we’d been doing this for years.
Halfway through, Liam climbed onto a picnic table. “This is the best birthday ever!” he shouted, hair stuck to his forehead with sweat, face split in a huge grin. The kids cheered. I snapped a photo, catching him mid-laugh with the ocean behind him and candles blazing. Later that night, on a tired impulse, I posted it to the Facebook account I’d practically abandoned. I didn’t even check who could see it.
Two days later, my cousin Melissa messaged me a screenshot of the photo. Your mom saw this. So did Vanessa, she wrote.
My stomach dropped. Melissa and I hadn’t talked about what really happened; I’d just said I moved for a job. Now she filled in the blanks. Mom had been telling everyone I’d “run off” to punish her, that she had no idea where we were and was worried sick about Liam. Seeing him in that picture—healthy, grinning in front of the ocean, cake bigger than any she’d ever bought—had apparently cracked something.
“She kept saying, ‘She looks fine. He looks fine. After everything I did,’” Melissa typed. “Then Vanessa started yelling.”
Another message followed. Mom’s planning a “family meeting” next month. She wants you there. Says it’s time you came home and stopped confusing Liam.
I read the words over and over. Home. As if the apartment over the laundromat—peeling linoleum, humming dryers, view of the dumpster—wasn’t the place where my son finally slept without worrying I’d be gone at another one of Aunt Vanessa’s events.
That night I showed Liam the photo on my phone. “What do you think?” I asked.
He studied it carefully. “I look really happy,” he said. “Happier than at Grandma’s. Even when there’s cake.”
Later, an unknown number buzzed my screen. We need to talk.
Mom’s serious about this meeting. Don’t make it worse by ignoring her. Vanessa, of course.
I started half a dozen replies—long explanations, apologies I didn’t owe, angry paragraphs I’d regret. Finally I erased them all and typed three short words that didn’t sound like the old me at all, but felt exactly like the person I was trying to become.
