Serena had taken their praise and done nothing with it.
I had taken their contempt and used it to survive storms.
Part 3: The First Payment
The emergency call had come three years earlier on a February night when rain sounded like gravel against the barracks windows.
My father never called unless someone had died or needed something.
That night, nobody had died.
Not yet.
“Clara,” he said, voice smaller than I had ever heard it, “can you come home?”
I drove.
When I entered the house, the living room smelled like wet wool, old coffee, and panic. My father sat on the couch with his hands buried in his hair. A red-stamped foreclosure notice lay on the glass coffee table.
My mother stood near the fireplace wearing pearl earrings, as if jewelry could hold a collapsing world together.
“What happened?” I asked.
My father did not answer.
My mother did.
