The engine room was not a punishment I inflicted.
It was the accommodation they could afford without me.
The shaking walls and the diesel smell and the fifty-dollar drinks were not my cruelty.
They were, precisely and only, the truth — the truth of what this vacation cost when the person who always paid finally stopped.
I had not sent them to that cabin.
I had merely stepped out of the space between them and the consequences of their own choices, a space I had been standing in, absorbing every blow, for thirty-three years.
They had simply never seen what was behind me, because I had always been in the way.
Chapter 17 — Through Him Like Glass
I didn’t see them again until the final morning, disembarking in Miami.
The atrium was packed, thousands of passengers waiting to clear customs, and I moved through the VIP express lane with my bags handled by the concierge, in a plain linen dress and sunglasses, feeling weightless.