She shifted her son higher on her shoulder, reached over, and turned off the burner. The gas clicked into silence. Then she set down the wooden spoon with the same care she would have used at any other hour of any other evening, and she walked past Ryan and down the hall.
He blinked.
That was the first sign he had miscalculated.
In the bedroom, she opened the closet and pulled out the battered suitcase she had not touched since before the pregnancy. The handle was cracked from years of early flights, back when she still packed audit folders into her carry-on and flew out Monday mornings and came home Fridays smelling like airport coffee and printer toner. Back when she still had a career that felt like hers. Before Ryan’s family had made the word career sound like a kind of selfishness. Before Calloway House had become a place where she apologized for needing sleep, apologized for not knowing unwritten rules until she broke them, apologized for asking questions that made the room go quiet.
She laid the suitcase on the bed and packed without her hands shaking.
