An hour later, he was gone. The door closed behind him with finality.
“Please don’t go.”
Mom called us upstairs. She looked smaller somehow. Fragile. Her head was wrapped in a pale blue scarf, and her eyes were glassy from exhaustion.
“Where’s your father?” she asked.
Jason looked at me.
I forced the words out. “He left.”
Mom closed her eyes for a long moment. When she opened them again, she didn’t cry.
She simply nodded. “Alright.”
“Where’s your father?”
***
Within a month, Dad had moved into a luxury condo across town with his 24-year-old personal trainer. Her name was Brittany. We found that out from one of Mom’s friends who saw them together at a restaurant.
Within another month, Dad’s mortgage payments stopped. Mom tried to hide the letters from the bank, but I saw them stacked on the kitchen counter. Red stamps. FINAL NOTICE.
Eventually, a man in a suit came to the door, and we lost the house.
Two weeks later, we packed our things.
Her name was Brittany.
Jason cried while we loaded boxes into a borrowed pickup truck.
“Are we ever coming back?” he asked.
