The Escape Plan
By the time my sister announced she was pregnant again, the air in my grandmother’s dining room felt thick enough to chew. “Morgan has volunteered to pay my $2,800 rent and the new van payments since I quit my job today.”
Courtney dropped that line between lazy bites of Caesar salad, like she was reading a weather report. Just a casual forecast: 100% chance of my life being set on fire.
She didn’t even look at me when she said it. Her smile was aimed at our grandmother, Sheila, sitting at the head of the table with a glass of boxed wine, and at Travis, her permanently unemployed boyfriend, who was busy shoveling garlic bread into his mouth. “Family supports family, right?” Courtney added, her voice sugar-sweet.
I watched Grandma nod, already halfway drunk. “Of course. That’s what we do.”
They all laughed.
No one noticed my fork had stopped halfway to my mouth. I didn’t argue. I didn’t shout.
I just swallowed the leaden lump in my throat and pushed my chair back slowly. “Excuse me,” I murmured. I walked down the narrow hallway and slipped into the converted pantry that my family liked to call “my room.”
There was no vent in there.
The shelves had been ripped out to slot in a too-small mattress. A single tiny window looked out at a brick wall. We called it a bedroom because “insulated storage closet for a human being we financially exploit” didn’t look as good on mail.
I shut the door and dragged the old wooden chair across the floor, jamming it under the knob. My name is Morgan. I’m twenty-six years old.
To my family, I am the quiet one. The pushover. The responsible one.
The free babysitter. The emergency fund in yoga pants. They think I work some mindless data entry job that barely covers fast food and Wi-Fi.
They have no idea that I’m actually a senior systems analyst for a major tech company. They don’t know that I make a six-figure salary. They don’t know I’ve been funneling seventy percent of it into a hidden offshore account for three years.
And they definitely don’t know that tonight was supposed to be the night I told them I was moving out. Not “moving out” like three blocks away. I mean gone.
New city. New life. New phone number.
A clean break. I’d rehearsed it: Thank you for everything, but I’m moving out next week. I found a job in Seattle.
The story doesn’t end here — it continues on the next page.
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