Fritz stood up. He looked like a wild animal. A speeding train was coming toward me. Head forward like a bull, he ran straight in my direction. He stopped abruptly when he was two feet away and pulled his upper lip back with disgust. “You are some sick pervert.”

His words hit me in a bad place. I tried to control myself. I held my voice low. “I’m sorry.” I had to say the right thing.

“How dare you use my image?” he growled. “How dare you bring your depravity into our home?”

Natalie looked up. She was watching her father. Her face was pale.

Amelia burst into hysterical sobs. “You should be down on your knees with gratitude to us,” she said between her sobs. “Are you mocking us? After all we did for you.”

“Did you do something for me?” My breath was catching in my throat. “Remind me.”

“You used us.” Amelia spoke through clenched teeth.

I was in a tunnel of rage—having difficulty allowing air into my lungs. “I guess that’s one way to look at it.” In that moment I hated Amelia with every molecule in my body.

“You are repulsive,” Amelia said.

“Mom,” Natalie said. “Enough!”

“It’s OK.” I tried to make eye contact with Natalie. “I’ll leave. As soon as I can get a moving truck.”

Amelia took long strides down the hallway toward the front door, grabbing a ring of keys off the hall console table. “You have more shit downstairs. I need to see all of it.”

“No.” I followed her, but she was fast. In an instant she was out the door, down the front steps. I was behind her. I refused to allow her into my computer, my files, my home. Whatever she thought she was going to see, she was wrong. I caught up to her at the top of the exterior stairs that led down to my garden apartment. I held her arm to prevent her from descending. She wrenched away from me. I ran ahead of her and put my body in front of hers, on the step below her, to block her way.

“Get out of my way,” she said.

“It’s my private apartment,” I said. “You can’t enter without notice.”

“Bullshit.” She pushed me aside.

I stepped back to catch myself, but my foot didn’t make contact with the step below me. My feet shuffled to get a hold, but I fell to the stone steps and rolled sideways down the remaining stairs. I landed at the base.

Perhaps this was the way it was meant to end. I felt the cool cement beneath my face. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

Amelia’s blurred face appeared over me, contorted in a sick grimace, and her breath was briefly suspended. Fritz was standing behind her.

“What did I do?” she whispered. “No, no, no, no.”