Her lips tightened.
There it was.
Fifteen years vanished instantly.
I was nineteen again, standing in my parents’ foyer as rain hammered the windows.
My father’s face had been purple with rage.
“No daughter of mine marries trash.”
Silas was twenty-one then.
He drove an old pickup with one working headlight. His father rented half a duplex. They shopped at discount stores and fixed things instead of replacing them.
Apparently, in my father’s world, poverty was contagious.
“You want to be a Callahan?” Dad had shouted.
Then he opened the front door.
“Go be one.”
Mom had stood halfway up the stairs in her robe.
Watching.
Silent.
My suitcase landed on the lawn.
So did a box of nursing-school textbooks.
