When my sister Ruth finally found me, I was sitting on a twin bed in an upstairs room, my left eye still bruised. Marcus filled the doorway, blocking the exit. Ruth looked at my face and asked the question I’d choked on for months: “Why isn’t she living in the house she bought with Otis?” Marcus didn’t hesitate. He smiled and said, “That house is my wife’s now. And if my mother keeps talking, I’ll hit her again and she’ll wear that color for weeks.”

Otis offered him work at the shop.

Marcus laughed like Otis had told a joke. “Me getting my hands greasy? No, Dad. I studied business administration. I’m not a mechanic.”

I saw those words hit Otis like bullets. I watched his shoulders slump and the light in his eyes dim. Otis had lived with grease under his nails his whole life so Marcus could have something different, and Marcus used it to humiliate him.

The last years of Otis’s life were quiet. He worked, came home, sat in his chair in front of the TV. He didn’t smile much anymore. He didn’t talk about dreams.

One night, shortly before he died, Otis took my hand.

“Eda,” he said, “promise me something.”

“Anything, love.”

“Promise me you won’t let anyone take this house from you. We bought it together. It’s yours. It’s ours. Promise me you’re going to die here in peace.”

I promised him with tears on my face. I promised him.

And now, packing my life into boxes while Vanessa picked curtains, I felt like I’d failed him. Like I’d betrayed his memory and everything we built.

“Hurry up, Mama,” Marcus shouted from the living room. “The moving truck gets here in an hour.”

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