tls On my birthday, my husband and children handed me divorce papers and eviction notices. The house, the business, the company, everything—gone. My daughter sneered, calling me pathetic, as they all laughed. I smiled, signed without trembling, and quietly left. Within a week, my phone lit up with 42 desperate calls. Karma had arrived faster than expected.

The first thing I noticed was Sophia’s laugh.

It floated up through the heating vent in my bedroom floor, bright and careless, the way it used to sound when she was sixteen and sneaking out to meet boys in the church parking lot, except there was no sweetness left in it now. There was only appetite. I was on my knees beside the bed, searching for the pearl earring I had dropped somewhere near the dust ruffle, when the sound came through the old ductwork and made my hand go still against the carpet.