It is impossible to imagine hearing those words. Really hearing them.
They were the last thing my father said to me before he shoved me out into the biting cold of an October storm and locked the door behind me.
“Get out of my house. I don’t need a sick daughter.”
I was fifteen years old. I had no coat. I had no phone. I had absolutely no money. All I had was a school backpack containing tonight’s algebra homework and a pair of canvas sneakers that were already soaking through with freezing rain.
Three hours later, the police would call him. When he heard what they had to say, I was told his face went as white as a ghost.
But by then, it was way too late.
My name is Sherry Walls. I’m twenty-eight now, sitting in my apartment in Boston, watching the rain slide down the glass of my living room window. There is a letter sitting on my kitchen table, written in shaky, jagged handwriting on cheap nursing home stationery.
After thirteen years of absolute silence, my father wants to see me. He says he is dying. He says he is sorry.
It’s funny about the rain; it has a way of transporting me right back to that night. October 14, 2011.
I remember coming home from school that afternoon like it was any other Tuesday. I had my backpack slung over one shoulder, my head buzzing with the high of an algebra test I had just aced. I was thinking about what might be for dinner, about my homework load, and about the specific band poster I wanted to buy with the birthday money I’d been saving.
Normal fifteen-year-old stuff.
I had absolutely no idea that in less than two hours, I would be walking alone through a freezing storm, genuinely wondering if I was going to survive the night.
The moment I stepped through that front door, the air in the house felt heavy, charged with static. I knew something was wrong instantly.
My father was standing in the center of the living room, looking for all the world like a volcano about to erupt. His face was the color of raw meat, a deep, alarming crimson. His hands were shaking violently, and he was gripping a wad of cash in one fist and several empty orange pill bottles in the other.
My sister, Corinne, stood right behind him.
She was nineteen, four years older than me. She had this expression plastered on her face—concerned, worried, heartbroken. It was the perfect picture of a devoted older sister who had just discovered something terrible about her baby sibling.
But I looked closer. I saw her eyes. I caught that tiny, fleeting flicker she couldn’t quite hide fast enough.
Satisfaction.
Our stepmother, Jolene, hovered in the kitchen doorway. Her arms were crossed tight over her chest, and her lips were pressed together into a thin line, saying absolutely nothing. That was her specialty: remaining silent while bad things happened.
My father didn’t even let me put down my backpack. He started screaming the second I was fully inside, yelling like I had set the house on fire.