I passed the kitchen and remembered Chloe at the sink, her small hands moving through water too hot for her.

I asked Sandra to wait while I stood alone there for a moment.

I had grown up thinking the house meant continuity.

Every portrait on the walls, every polished silver tray, every holiday dinner seemed designed to prove we were an important family.

But importance had become an excuse for cruelty.

I decided to stop hosting family events there and to establish a different place for Chloe, somewhere the rules weren’t written by people who believed kindness could be inherited with a surname.

Back at our apartment, Camilla had brought takeout for dinner.