The weekends continued, and the rules became increasingly cruel. My father eventually had a locksmith install a deadbolt that could lock my bedroom from the hallway. I kept my toothbrush and hairbrush in my car, along with anything else I needed when I was sent away. My mail disappeared before every visit, and I wasn’t allowed to park on our street when the Ashcrofts were coming. The messages arrived days in advance, sometimes demanding that I leave as early as eight in the morning. I began recording every forced absence in a yellow spiral notebook. One tally mark for each weekend, followed by the date and year. By my twenty-first birthday, there were more than a hundred.

That same year, my mother began charging me $450 every month for room and board. I paid it from my paycheck, even though I wasn’t allowed to stay in my own bedroom whenever Ellie visited. Eventually, I asked my mother what Ellie actually knew about me. She was washing dishes when she answered without hesitation. Ellie believed I lived in Charlotte, had a job there, and was too busy to visit. Then my mother handed me a wet dish and quietly warned me not to make her a liar. It was cruel, but it explained everything. My family had invented another life for me, one that kept me safely away from the people they wanted to impress. I believed them because I had no idea how much worse the truth could be.