Because she wasn’t a cartoon villain.
She was a frightened, limited woman who had learned somewhere long ago that the only way to feel large was to make someone else feel small, and who had genuinely never imagined the small one would simply stand up and walk out.
Her cruelty had a logic.
It just wasn’t mine anymore, and it had no more claim on me than the weather in a city I’d already left.
That, I realized, was the real freedom — not winning the argument, but no longer needing to have it.
The movers wheeled the last box to the door.
I crossed to the bare console, took out my keys, unspooled a little wooden keychain that said Home — a cheap anniversary gift from Shane — slipped it into my pocket, and set the metal keys down on the wood.
They landed with a flat, final sound, like a gavel.
“Shane,” I said.
“You told me again and again I wasn’t worthy of this house.