They came at midnight.
They came with three sleepy children, two garbage bags of clothes, and my mother standing on Mr. Gideon’s porch like she had every right to be there.
I was in the attic when I heard the pounding.
Not a polite knock.
Not a confused tap from a neighbor.
A hard, desperate, angry pounding that shook the old wooden front door downstairs.
Mr. Gideon shouted from below, “Nobody respectable knocks like that after eleven.”
I set my nursing textbook down.
My stomach tightened before I even knew why.
Then I heard my mother’s voice through the floorboards.
“Vesper! I know you’re in there!”
For one wild second, I thought about pretending I was not home.
I thought about crawling under the attic quilt like I was still a child hiding from a thunderstorm.
But I was not a child anymore.
And that was exactly the problem.
