I didn’t know a boundary could sound like a dial tone until I watched my parents’ U-Haul idle at my gate, their impatience humming louder than the engine, my mother’s name strobing on my phone like an alarm I’d been trained never to silence. Their plan was already unpacked in their voices—my guest room renamed “home,” my savings relabeled “family.” When I told Dale to hold the line and not add their names to the access list, my mother’s outrage cracked into disbelief, then into a thin, shaking laugh that asked if I was really choosing a code over my own blood. I stared at the feed, at the truck that meant permanence, at the minivan packed with expectations, and felt the old reflex to surrender rise like heartburn—then stop, abrupt and foreign, as the word no finally rooted itself in my mo… Continues…
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