When I opened my eyes, I saw the sun coming in, but I didn’t move. I only got up to go to the bathroom. I slipped out of my dress, tossing it into the trash bin in my room, then slipped into my pjs and let the darkness take me again over and over again. In my dreams, he told me it was going to be okay. In my dreams, I cried out from the pain I felt. In my dreams, I lost him over and over again. I’d wake with my pillow soaked with the tears I cried.

I heard whispers from the hallway, knowing it was my parents. I heard shouting, but my body didn’t allow me to get up.

I felt the bed dip, and my heart sped up, thinking it was him. I opened my eyes, and it was my mother with her own tears running down her face. “You need to eat something.”

“I can’t,” I whispered. “He’s having a baby, Momma,” I sobbed, the tears coming again. “He’s having a baby.”

“I know, pretty girl.” She pushed back my hair.

“I can’t stay here,” I said between sobs. “I can’t watch him have a family without me.”

She only nodded and then got up and walked out of the room. When she came back, it was with a suitcase. I watched as she packed my stuff, and we made a plan to sneak out. “You have to hide in the back under a blanket.”

“Why?” I asked her.

“He hasn’t left the entrance in two days,” my mother whispered. “I’ll come to you in two days. Casey will stay with you until then.”

I snuck out of my house in the middle of the night like a thief in the night. I cried the whole way as I prayed he’d follow us, but when we parked and Casey opened the door, I saw it was just us.

The knock on the door makes me look back, and I come back to the here and now. “Yeah,” I say. The door opens, and it’s my mother.

“You have to come down and eat something please.” She begs me just as she did eight years ago. “We have to talk things out.”

“I will,” I say, and she walks to me and hugs me.

“Nothing is going to touch you here,” she says, and I breathe in her smell.

“Kallie!” Casey shouts my name up the stairs. “Get your ass back down here.”

“Well, then,” my mother says, trying not to laugh, and I shake my head.

“I should have finished the whole bottle of whiskey,” I mumble. When we walk back down, I see that Olivia is sitting on the couch with her feet tucked under her, and she is holding a teacup.