His grandmother held up the van keys. “Here are your options. You want to keep living in this house, you drive the van. You take the baby to every appointment. You install the car seat. You clean the messes. You deal with spit-up and diaper leaks and crumbs and stains. You learn what actual responsibility looks like.”
He stared at her. “And if I don’t?”
Silence.
Then Logan looked at me in a way that finally made sense. Not angry. Not smug. Scared.
Because he had figured out this was no longer about the car. It was about the fact that I had seen exactly who he was when I needed him most.
He said quietly, “You’d really let her do this?”
I said, “I’m not begging you to care about us.”
He flinched.
Then he took the van keys.
He walked outside without another word. Through the front window, I watched him stand there in the driveway while the flatbed operator started loading his car. Logan looked like he wanted to stop it, but he knew he couldn’t. Not legally. Not without making things even uglier.
A minute later, he opened the minivan door and looked at the stained cloth seat like it had insulted his bloodline.
Then he got in.
His grandmother sat beside me on the couch.
She said, more softly this time, “Now you know.”
