That was the day he opened the door and told me to leave.

“Then go,” he said in a tone that was calm and sharp enough to cut through me. “Do it on your own.”

He didn’t shout. He didn’t cry. His voice was even, as if he had simply decided to clear out junk that no longer fit in his tidy, controlled life. My father wasn’t cruel by nature, but he was cold. His love always came with fine print, and when I no longer fit into the contract, he canceled me out of his world.

At seventeen, I found myself standing on the sidewalk with nothing but a duffel bag and the faint pulse of life inside me. The father of my baby stuck around for two weeks