“I didn’t sign up for this.”
“Please don’t go,” I said, grabbing his sleeve.
Dad didn’t answer. Instead, he adjusted his silver Rolex watch as if he were checking the time for a meeting.
Jason ran up the stairs and grabbed Dad’s leg. “Daddy, Mom’s sick!”
Dad gently removed his hands, as if Jason were a stranger’s kid in a grocery store.
“I can’t do this,” he muttered.
An hour later, he was gone. The door closed behind him with finality.
“Please don’t go.”
Mom called us upstairs. She looked smaller somehow. Fragile. Her head was wrapped in a pale blue scarf, and her eyes were glassy from exhaustion.
“Where’s your father?” she asked.
Jason looked at me.
I forced the words out. “He left.”
Mom closed her eyes for a long moment. When she opened them again, she didn’t cry.
She simply nodded. “Alright.”
“Where’s your father?”
***
Within a month, Dad had moved into a luxury condo across town with his 24-year-old personal trainer. Her name was Brittany. We found that out from one of Mom’s friends who saw them together at a restaurant.
Within another month, Dad’s mortgage payments stopped. Mom tried to hide the letters from the bank, but I saw them stacked on the kitchen counter. Red stamps. FINAL NOTICE.
Eventually, a man in a suit came to the door, and we lost the house.
