The cuffs didn’t sound like justice; they sounded like punctuation at the end of a sentence I’d been writing in other people’s handwriting for ten years. By the time the cruiser turned the corner, the house I’d been erased from now legally belonged to me, and the people who had tried to steal my life’s only proof were on their way to county lockup. But the key Margaret left me had never really been about property; it was about choosing, finally, to stop absorbing other people’s cruelty like it was just part of the job. In the motel, in the bank, in Mr. Harris’s office, I had felt my world tilt, but now, idling at the curb, I felt it lock into a new alignment. The trap had sprung, precisely as she’d designed it, and for once, I was not the one expected to swall… Continues…
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