Part 3 – The Year That Disappeared
Lola found me crying in the office break room a week later. She closed the door and sat beside me.
“Come stay with me,” she said. “The couch folds out. You can stay one night or one year.”
“I cannot leave the house. What if Sarah comes back and I am not there?”
Lola did not argue. She only placed her hand over mine.
“Then remember this: the offer does not expire.”
I almost told her about the college fund. I almost asked her to examine the statement Kevin had shown me. I even considered calling Harold, the attorney who had prepared my father’s trust documents years earlier.
But fear had made me cautious in all the wrong ways. Kevin had never needed to lock a door or shout every day. He only needed to remind me whose name appeared on the mortgage, who controlled the bank account, and how quickly my life could collapse without him.
So the months passed.
