The apartment building looks smaller than I remember. Shabbier. Paint peeling from window frames, the concrete steps cracked and listing, the kind of slow decay that comes from neglect rather than poverty. My parents have always had money—not much, but enough to fix these things if they cared. They don't care. They never have.
James waits by the car, a dark silhouette against streetlights that bleed yellow into my enhanced vision. I told him to stay outside. Need to do this alone. But knowing he's there—that I can retreat to him if this becomes unbearable—makes the armor I'm wearing feel less fragile.
I climb the stairs. Each step feels like moving through water, resistance building with proximity. The old patterns want to reassert themselves before I even knock—the guilt, the obligation, the sense that I owe them something for the sin of being born unwanted.
But I'm not here for them. I'm here for me.
I knock. Wait. Hear shuffling inside, the scrape of a chain, and then my mother opens the door.
Surprise flashes across her face—brief, unguarded—before it settles into the expression I know too well. The martyred confusion of a woman whose daughter never visits, who can't imagine why that might be.
"Theresa." My name sounds like an accusation. "What are you doing here?"
"Can I come in?"
She steps aside, and I enter the apartment that smells exactly as I remember—stale cigarettes and microwaved dinners and the particular staleness of people who've stopped opening windows. The television blares from the living room. My father sits in his chair, the same chair he's occupied for as long as I can remember, and doesn't turn when I enter.
"Your father and I were just—" My mother trails off, because they weren't "just" anything. They were sitting in separate rooms, existing in the same space without connection, the way they've existed for decades.
"Hi, Dad." I try to keep my voice neutral.
He grunts. Doesn't look away from the screen. His acknowledgment of my existence distilled to a sound that could mean anything or nothing.
The old rage flares hot in my chest. Twenty-four years of this. Twenty-four years of feeling like an inconvenience, a burden, a mistake they never wanted but were stuck with anyway.
"Alan told me about the money," my mother says, settling on the couch with a sigh that suggests I've already exhausted her. "Quite generous. I'm glad you finally decided to help your family."
Finally. The word lands like a slap. As if I haven't been helping. As if I didn't sacrifice pieces of myself so Alan wouldn't be beaten to death.
"After years of being selfish," my father mutters from his chair, still not looking at me. "Nice to see you remember where you came from."
The words are designed to wound. To make me small. To reassert the dynamic where I'm forever the ungrateful daughter who owes them everything for the tremendous sacrifice of not abandoning me at birth.
And it works. For a moment, it works. The guilt rises automatic as breathing used to be, the sense that they're right, that I am selfish, that I should apologize for taking up space in their lives.
Then I look at them. Really look at them with my new predator's eyes.
My mother, hunched on the couch, face lined with bitterness that has nothing to do with age and everything to do with choices. My father, barely aware of my presence, focused on a television show he's probably seen a hundred times because new things require effort he's never been willing to give.
They're small. Not physically—though my mother has shrunk with the years—but existentially. Small, sad people trapped in resentment they wear like a second skin. They've spent decades blaming the world for their unhappiness, blaming their children, blaming anyone but themselves for the choices that led here.
And they'll never change. Never wake up and realize they've wasted their lives being angry about things they could have fixed if they'd tried. They'll die in this apartment, bitter and alone, convinced they were victims rather than architects of their own misery.
The rage deflates. Doesn't disappear—I'll probably carry pieces of it forever—but it loses its teeth. Loses its power over me. Because looking at them now, I don't feel anger.
I feel pity.
"I forgive you," I say quietly.
My mother blinks. "What?"
"I forgive you. Both of you." The words feel strange in my mouth, but also right. Necessary. "For making me feel unwanted. For treating me like a burden. For all of it."
"We never—" my mother starts, defensive mechanisms engaging automatically.
"Yes, you did." I cut her off gently. "You made it very clear that I was an obligation, not a choice. That I was something to be endured rather than loved."
My father finally turns his head, expression somewhere between confusion and irritation. "If you came here to complain—"
"I didn't." I hold his gaze without flinching. "I came here to let go. I'm forgiving you—not because you asked for it, not because you deserve it, but because I deserve peace. I deserve to stop carrying your resentment like it's mine."
"We gave you everything—" my mother begins, the familiar refrain of parents who provided food and shelter and think that's the same as love.
"You gave me what the law required," I correct. "Anything beyond that felt like a favor you held over my head." I exhale slowly, unnecessarily. "But I'm not angry anymore. I'm just... done. Done carrying rage that poisons me more than it ever hurt you."
My father scoffs. Turns back to the television. Dismisses me the way he's dismissed everything that requires emotional effort. "Dramatic as always."
The comment should wound. Should make me want to prove myself, to force him to acknowledge what he did wrong, to make them understand.
But I don't need them to understand. Don't need their acceptance or approval or even their acknowledgment that they failed me.
I just need to walk away.
"I hope you're happy someday," I say, and mean it. Not because they deserve happiness, but because their misery served no purpose. Changed nothing. Just spread like poison through everyone who touched them.
My mother opens her mouth, closes it. Doesn't know what to say when the script deviates from accusation and defense.
I turn and walk toward the door. Each step feels lighter than the last, like I'm shedding weight I didn't realize I was carrying. The guilt, the obligation, the desperate need for them to be something they were never capable of being—all of it stays in that apartment with them.
Outside, the night air feels clean. Cold. Real.
James straightens from where he's been leaning against the car, and I see the question in his gray-blue eyes before he asks it.
"How do you feel?"
"Free." The word comes out certain. Final. "Finally free."
He studies my face, and something in his expression softens. Pride, maybe. Or recognition of what it costs to release old wounds. He takes my hand, his fingers ice against mine, and the touch grounds me.
"Now what?" He opens the car door for me, and I slide inside, feeling the last threads connecting me to that apartment snap clean.
"Take me to Emily's," I say as he gets in. "I want to celebrate."