This Is Our Place
I was in the office break room when Ava called, and for a second I almost let it go to voicemail. That is the kind of ordinary mistake that happens right before a day divides itself into before and after. The coffee in my hand was bitter enough to smell burned through the lid.
The microwave behind me turned someone’s leftover soup in slow circles. Two coworkers were laughing about something near the vending machine, the easy reflexive laughter of a Tuesday morning that expects nothing unusual. Then Ava’s name appeared on my phone screen and something shifted in my chest before I even answered, because my twelve-year-old daughter did not call me during work hours unless something was wrong.
She did not say hello. She breathed. Thin, careful breaths, the kind children produce when they are trying to sound older than they are.
“Mom,” she whispered. “Why are we moving?”
I did not understand the question. “What do you mean?”
A pause.
In the pause I heard a drawer open somewhere on her end. Fabric rustling. My own heartbeat louder than the break room.
“Grandma said I have to pack,” Ava said. “She said I don’t live here anymore.”
I set my coffee down hard enough that some of it splashed through the lid. “Where are you right now?”
“In my room.”
“Who is in the house?”
“Grandma is in the hallway.
Aunt Bianca is here. Grandpa is downstairs with boxes.”
The break room contracted around me. I was already reaching for my keys.
For eight years, that condo had been the safest place Ava knew. It was not large. Two bedrooms, one small balcony, a laundry closet that rattled when the dryer was on, and a kitchen where the dishwasher required you to press your hip against the door before hitting start, a quirk we had come to treat as a ritual rather than a flaw.
The story doesn’t end here — it continues on the next page.
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