By the time you and your wife reach the curb, the sky above San Rafael has torn wide open, dumping cold water in sheets so thick they smear the streetlights into trembling gold. Carmen grips a broken umbrella that does nothing but rattle in the wind. You drag two old suitcases behind you, and every scrape of their cracked wheels across the sidewalk sounds like the last cruel sentence of a house that no longer wants your names inside it.
You are seventy-five years old, and tonight your own children made you feel older than grief.
Not because your knees hurt. Not because your back bends the way old redwood beams bend after decades of holding more weight than they were ever thanked for carrying. What crushes you is the sound of Daniel’s voice, calm and clipped, as if he were discussing escrow paperwork instead of exile. “Enough, Dad. The house is in my name now. You two don’t belong there anymore.”
That sentence keeps replaying in your head while the storm needles your face.
