Chapter 2 - The Threshold of Departure
I stood up so fast my chair tipped back and hit the wall with a dull thud. For three seconds, the blood roared in my ears so loudly that the room seemed to tilt on its axis. Every sacrifice I had made over the past four years—every extra shift at the warehouse, every monthly bank transfer set up like clockwork, every swallowed insult and forced smile—flashed behind my eyes like frames of a damaged film.
"Then you won’t mind if I do this," I said. My voice wasn't loud. It didn't shake. It was cold, flat, and hollow, stripped of every ounce of warmth I had ever carried into that house.
No one asked what I meant. My father picked his fork back up, his attention already drifting back to the plate of food cooling in front of him. Ross reached for the bread basket, tearing off a roll as if nothing of consequence had occurred. They didn't look at Micah. They didn't look at the gravy staining his trousers or the steam rising from his lap. They simply expected what they had always expected: that I would take the boy, clean him up in the powder room, drive home in silence, and be back on the phone by Tuesday morning asking if we could try again for New Year’s.
They thought we were infinite resources. They thought our love was a tax they were entitled to levy.
"Come on, Micah," I said, keeping my tone as steady as I could manage. I reached out and took his small, cold hand.
He didn't pull away, but he didn't stand immediately either. He looked up at me, his lower lip trembling just a fraction before he bit down on it to stop it. "Is Grandma mad because of the train?" he whispered, his voice small and thin in the large, hostile room.
"No, sweetheart," I said, my throat tightening so hard it felt like swallowing glass. "Grandma isn't mad about the train. Grandma is just... having a very difficult time, and this is not our fault. We’re going to go get cleaned up."
I led him down the narrow hallway toward the downstairs bathroom. The house was warm—too warm, kept at seventy-four degrees because my father complained about drafts, a luxury paid for by the utility auto-pay that left my checking account every fourteen days without fail.
In the bathroom, I turned on the tap and grabbed a handful of paper towels from the holder. The water came out lukewarm, then hot. I wet a towel and began gently dabbing at the thick brown gravy on his green sweater, but the wool had absorbed it deep into the fibers. The grease was already setting, leaving a dark, mottled stain across his chest.
"I’m sorry, Mom," Micah whispered, staring at his reflection in the oval mirror above the sink. "I shouldn't have talked about the wheels so much. Uncle Ross said—"
"Stop," I interrupted him, my voice firm enough that he blinked and looked up at me. I knelt down on the tiled floor so our eyes were level. I took both of his small hands in mine. "Listen to me, Micah. Look at me. You did nothing wrong. You were excited about something you built with your own hands, and that is a wonderful thing to be. You never have to apologize for being smart, or for being interested in how the world works. Do you understand?"
He nodded slowly, a single tear escaping the corner of his eye and cutting a clean path through the gravy smudge on his cheek. I reached out with a damp corner of the towel and wiped it away, my hands shaking only slightly now that the initial shock was giving way to a cold, crystalline resolve.
"Are we going home?" he asked.
"Not yet," I said. "We’re going to go get some hot chocolate. Somewhere warm, where we can sit down and talk about steam engines as long as you want."
We walked out of the bathroom and down the hall toward the front door. I grabbed our coats from the hall tree—the same oak tree my father had built in his workshop back when he still worked with his hands, back before the contracting business collapsed under a mountain of unpaid sub-contractor liens and poor management. I slipped Micah’s heavy winter coat over his shoulders, ignoring the smell of warm beef and grease that rose from the fabric. I didn't look into the dining room as we passed the arched doorway. I didn't want to see them sitting there, eating off the plates I had stocked, beneath the kitchen cabinets I had financed.
The cold air outside hit us like a physical blow. The wind had picked up, driving needles of sleet horizontally across the driveway. I strapped Micah into his booster seat in the back of the sedan, checking the buckles twice to make sure he was secure. His green sweater was still damp against his back, and I draped my own wool scarf over his shoulders like a blanket.
"You okay back there?" I asked, leaning in through the open door.
"It’s cold," he admitted, his teeth chattering slightly. "And my tummy feels funny."
"We’ll fix that in five minutes," I promised.
May you like
I slammed the car door, walked around to the driver's side, and got in. The engine turned over with a heavy groan before catching. I turned the heater up to maximum, directing the vents toward the floor and the windshield, watching the digital dashboard read out the outside temperature: fourteen degrees Fahrenheit.
I didn't drive toward the highway that led back to our apartment in the city. Instead, I turned the wheel toward the small strip mall three blocks away, where a bright neon sign cut through the swirling grey snow, advertising fresh pastries and hot drinks.
