It got worse, the way these things do. She got quiet. Stopped eating with us. Stopped bringing friends around. I called it attitude. Dale called it attitude. We had a nice little team going, the two of us, against a teenager.

She left at 17. I remember it was getting dark out. She came down the stairs with a black garbage bag, the kind you put leaves in, stuffed full of her clothes. She didn’t even have a real suitcase, and that’s on me, I never thought to buy her one. She stood at the front door with that bag and she looked right at me. “Mom. Please.” Two words. That’s all she gave me, and it was more than I deserved.

And I said nothing. I stood there in the living room and I let my 17-year-old walk out into the dark with a garbage bag because saying nothing kept the peace with Dale. He was sitting right there. I could feel him watching to see what I’d do. So I did nothing. The door shut and that was that.

I found out later, years later, that she slept in her car for about three weeks. A girl who couldn’t legally rent an apartment, sleeping in the backseat in November. Then she got into a shelter, the one off Route 9, not far from the diner where I used to bring home pie for her on my way back. Same road. I drove past that shelter who knows how many times and never once thought my own child might be inside it.

She didn’t call. I didn’t either. The years just stacked up. One turned into five turned into more. I told myself she’d come around. I told myself I’d done my best. That’s a lie people tell themselves so they can sleep.

She’s 28 now. I know that much through her cousin, who still talks to me out of pity, I think. Lauren’s a nurse. She got married. She has two little ones, a boy and a girl. Grandbabies I have never held. Never even seen except in one picture her cousin showed me on a phone, and I asked to see it twice and then I had to hand the phone back before I started crying in front of her.

Dale, the man I traded her for. He left me in 2021. Just up and went. Took the flatscreen TV off the wall and took $4,300 out of the checking account, which was most of what I had. Bless his heart, he didn’t even leave a note. Twelve years I gave that man. Go figure. After everything, he walked out easier than my daughter did, and he didn’t even look back to say please.

So that’s how I ended up alone in this house, painting rooms nobody comes to visit. Which brings me to last Thursday.