“Kevin manages it.”
But as Sarah grew older, something between them turned bitter.
Kevin criticized everything: her clothes, friends, even the way she laughed.
***
The house was too quiet when I stepped inside. I set my bag down in the hallway and called out.
“Sarah? Kev? I’m home.”
Nothing answered but the hum of the fridge.
Kevin criticized everything.
I walked past the kitchen toward Sarah’s room, and my feet slowed on their own before I got there.
My daughter’s door stood open. That door was never open when she wasn’t in it.
Inside, her closet gaped empty, and a row of bare wire hangers knocked softly against each other in the draft from the vent, ticking like a clock I hadn’t noticed starting.
From the kitchen behind me, I heard movement.
My feet slowed on their own.
“Where is she?” I asked.
Kevin sat at the kitchen counter, calmly spreading butter on a piece of bread.
He didn’t look up. He kept dragging his butter knife across a slice of sourdough, like a man with no worries.
“She left.”
“She left?”
“I told her to.”
My suitcase slid from my fingers and hit the tile with a crack that seemed too loud for the quiet house.
“Where is she?”
