I thought my stepmother just hated my mother’s old laptop. But the moment she smiled and dropped it down fourteen steps, I realized she wasn’t wiping the counter—she was trying to erase my entire future.
The house had stopped feeling like home the winter I turned fourteen, the same winter we buried my mother in a coat she never got to wear.
Eight years later, at twenty-two, I still moved through its rooms the way a guest moves through a stranger’s kitchen. Quiet steps.
Low voice. Eyes down.
I had exactly twenty-four hours left. One day until my thesis defense on Friday afternoon, then a full graduate scholarship, then a state line between me and this address.
Karen’s voice slid in from the hallway behind me.
I did not turn around. I had learned not to.
“I have my defense tomorrow,” I said, keeping my eyes on my screen.
Four years of research glowed back at me. Citations, slides, a conclusion I had rewritten nine times.
“Mmm.
Your father says you’ve been very dramatic about it.” Karen smiled the smile she used only when Mark was not in the room. “I just worry. You look exhausted.”
My dad walked in then, loosening his tie, smelling like the office and the cold night air outside.
He kissed the top of Karen’s head before he noticed me.
“Still at it.”
“She’s been at it for years, Mark,” Karen said softly. “I keep telling her to rest.”
“She’s a good listener, your stepmom,” he said to me and disappeared up the stairs.
I waited until I heard their bedroom door close before I let my shoulders drop.
Karen lingered near the counter, eyeing my laptop.
“That’s a nice computer. Expensive?”
“It was Mom’s old one,” I muttered.
“I upgraded the hard drive.”
She finally drifted away.
I stared at the screen until the words blurred, thinking about the strange phone call I had received last week from my advisor, Professor Lin. She had called to double-check that I was still enrolled and attending classes.
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