She’s the energy that keeps this house alive.

I’m just the shadow in the corner.

When I head down the narrow staircase, squeezing my duffel through, the sink shuts off, and my mom emerges in the living room. I slow down between her and the front door.

She dries her hands with a towel, poker-faced and more resilient. “I’m not paying for this,” she says. “You’re on your own now.”

A tear slips down my cheek. “Okay.” I guess she’s hoping I’ll become afraid, run out of money, and turn around. I want to be brave enough to stick it out, but I’m not sure if I’m wired that way.

She adds, “You’re old enough to do what you want, and you’re old enough to make your own mistakes.”

I think about her around my age, pregnant and making some of the hardest choices she had to make. I suppose she would believe that I’m an adult now if she was forced to be one back then. But I’m scared, and I feel like a plastic doll headed for a toy car, unable to see outside of my Polly Pocket house. What lies beyond—I don’t know.

“If you need me,” she says, “you have to come home yourself.” She works for the post office and has almost no vacation days—definitely not enough to chase me to Philadelphia. And I’m not asking her to.

I wish I could say that I’m full of bittersweet love, but I’m mostly dark and resentful. Most of me hates, and I can barely meet her eyes without feeling tricked and fooled and deceived.

I want to meet a different pair of eyes that hold greater truths and sentiments, and they’re not hers.

I just nod, turn around, and open the front door, the sun already gone. The street lamps already turned on, and I unlock my gold ‘90s Honda. I jiggle the handle for it to open. The car used to be my Grandma Ida’s, and I’m just grateful I have it, something that I can use to leave.

“Drive safe.” I think I hear my mom.

I look back at the front door, but it’s already closed. The lights are already off, and I wonder if she’s happy that I’m going, if all this time I’ve been a bad memory for her.

Maybe just like Loren Hale has been.

The Calloway Sisters & Their Men – Fan Page

Back Then | Followers: 11K

Are you new here? Welcome! This is the fan page for all things Calloway Sisters & Their Men. It’s not an “official” fan page and is in no way associated with the Calloways, Meadows, Cobalts or Hales. It’s just run by a dedicated blogger (me, Olive!) who is in love with all things Calloway!

Don’t know who they are? Let me give you a crash course…

There are four Calloway Sisters, but only the youngest three sisters have gained notoriety after a huge scandal. Headlines were everywhere. Even national news channels! It leaked that Lily Calloway is a sex addict, for real. It probably would have just breezed through the media if not for the fact that they’re all heiresses. Their father owns Fizzle. So the Fizz Life or Diet Fizz you’re drinking—yeah, the Calloway Sisters are heiresses of that soda fortune.