Days became weeks. Weeks became months.
The house grew quieter, and eventually, even ordinary family dinners felt different. I missed seeing her at the table, hearing about her day, and watching her rush through the kitchen looking for something to eat before work.
Yet I buried my sadness beneath excuses.
I was tired. I had responsibilities. She needed to learn independence.
Those were the explanations I repeated to myself whenever guilt threatened to surface.
Then, one evening around ten o’clock, someone knocked on our front door.
I opened it and found her standing beneath the porch light.
She looked thinner than I remembered. Her hair was tied into a messy knot, and tears streamed down her cheeks. She clutched a crumpled envelope in both hands.
“I didn’t want to come back,” she whispered. “But I didn’t know where else to go.”
My heart sank.
She held out the envelope.
