I wiped my face.
“Grandma… why didn’t you do this sooner?”
She was quiet for a long time, long enough that I thought she hadn’t heard me.
“Because I kept hoping he’d change,” she said. “That was my mistake.”
Gerald didn’t wait long.
The calls started the next morning. Eleanor’s phone rang at 7:15. She looked at the screen, silenced it, and went back to making toast. It rang again at 7:20, 7:31, 7:45. She let every one go to voicemail.
Then he called me.
The first time, his voice was soft, almost unrecognizable. “Come home, sweetheart. We can talk about this. I was upset. I said things I didn’t mean. Let’s sit down like a family.”
I didn’t answer. I just listened.
Two hours later, the second call. The sweetness was gone.
“You’re making a fool of yourself, Karen. The whole town is going to know about this. You want people talking? You want that on you?”
The third call came at 9:40 that night. His voice was cold and flat—the Gerald I knew best.
“If you don’t come back by Friday, I’m cutting you off completely. No phone, no insurance, nothing. You’ll have nothing.”
He called Uncle Russell next. Russell told me later, quietly, almost ashamed, that Gerald said, “You help them, you’re dead to me. I mean it.”
On Tuesday, Gerald showed up at my school.
He walked into the front office and demanded to see me. The receptionist, a woman named Linda who’d worked there 20 years and did not care for men who raised their voices in her lobby, told him he needed an appointment. He didn’t have one.
Mrs. Herr was alerted. She pulled me out of third-period history and walked me to her office through the back hallway.
“He’s in the building,” she said, her hand on my shoulder. “You’re safe. He can’t get past Linda.”
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