“You’ll be back, Jason!

You have no idea how to raise a daughter on your own!” And beside me, I felt Maya begin to tremble at the words.

I stopped.

I turned around, and I looked my mother in the eye, and I said the truest thing I had said all day.

“Maybe I didn’t know how before,” I said.

“But I am going to learn.” And I closed the car door, and I drove my daughter away from that house, and I never brought her back to it again.

Chapter 19 — The Basket