“I Came Home Early to Find My Parents Packing My Life Away Without Telling Me”

was supposed to go.

“Katie,” she said, and her tone carried that soft warning I remembered from childhood, the one that used to make me shrink and apologize. “Don’t be dramatic. This is for your own good.”

I took a step farther into the room, and the smell hit me all at once—cardboard, packing tape, and the faint perfume my mother wore when she wanted continue reading …