After the burial, Sarah asked if I wanted her to stay the night. I told her I wasn’t alone. I was awake. She looked at me for a long time, then hugged me and left.

I drove to the apartment Jack had inherited. It was still Veronica and Ruben’s home, at least in the way people use that word when they’ve been allowed to stay somewhere long enough. They’d lived there rent-free for years. I had a key because I owned it, and I had one of their spare keys because I’d made copies for them.

I sat in the car before going in. I didn’t know what I was going to do. I just knew I couldn’t go back to my own house and pretend the room where Matthew’s glove sat was the only thing that had changed.

The apartment was ordinary. A stack of mail sat on the counter. There were shoes by the door and a cereal bowl in the sink. I didn’t touch anything for a few minutes. Then I started packing.

I folded clothes and put dishes in boxes. I kept stopping when I found something I’d bought them. A set of towels. A lamp. A small table I’d helped Ruben carry upstairs. It’s silly what your brain chooses to notice when you’re trying not to think.

I didn’t break anything or throw their things outside. I called movers and paid to have the boxes taken to my parents’ house. They’d given me a spare key to their place years before, after I helped them during a pipe leak. I set the boxes in the middle of their living room, stacked carefully. I’m sure it looked like a message. It was.

The locksmith came that afternoon. He asked whether I wanted to change one lock or all of them. I said all of them. I wanted no old key to work.

I know that sounds cold. It was cold. I’d spent years calling my own resentment “being patient,” and I wasn’t interested in doing that anymore.

Then I went home and opened my laptop. I canceled the payments I’d been making. My parents’ car insurance. A few prescriptions. The grocery-store card. Veronica’s phone. Ruben’s car payment. A gym membership I barely remembered paying for. The total came to just under $3,000 a month.

I clicked through each account one at a time. I saw the dates when the bills would stop, and I wrote them down. That felt better than crying. I don’t know if that makes sense, but it did at the time.

For a long time, I’d told myself those payments were love. Maybe part of them were. But I also liked being needed. I liked the calls that began with, “Angela, can you help me?” I’d built a whole place for myself in that family, and I was embarrassed to see how much of it depended on my money.

That afternoon Veronica posted pictures from Cancun. She stood in a yellow dress with a drink in her hand. Ruben had sunglasses on. My parents were smiling in one of the pictures. Veronica wrote that she was thankful for the family that always showed up when she needed them.

I took screenshots. I don’t know what I planned to do with them. Maybe I wanted proof for myself, because I had spent so long explaining things away.

The next few days were quiet. I got calls and messages, but I didn’t answer. I didn’t listen to every voicemail. I couldn’t sit through my mother saying she was sorry and then explaining the $8,000 again.

When they came back from Cancun, they went to the apartment first. I know because Veronica called me from there. Her key didn’t work. She said the boxes were gone and asked what I’d done.

I told her I wasn’t discussing it by phone. She said they were coming to my house.

They arrived late that night with suitcases. Veronica was still in the yellow dress, though it was wrinkled from travel. Ruben stood behind her with one hand on a bag. Mom was already speaking before she got out of the car. Dad stayed by the driveway, looking down at his phone.

Veronica asked why their keys didn’t work. I looked at her and said, “You went on vacation. I assumed you wanted a few days away from your responsibilities.”

That was all I said. I didn’t explain the funeral. They knew. I didn’t explain the apartment. It was mine, and they knew that too.

Mom told me I was making things worse. Dad said we could talk about it in the morning. Ruben asked where his things were. I told them the boxes were at my parents’ house.

Veronica said I couldn’t do this to her while she was pregnant. I looked at the suitcase beside her, then at the key ring in my hand. I thought about Matthew’s glove and the mud in its seams. I didn’t say anything else.

They left. Not happily. They went to my parents’ house, where their belongings were waiting in the living room. For a while, I heard from a lawyer because Veronica and Ruben didn’t think I had the right to end their arrangement. I showed the lawyer the deed and the messages where they’d called the apartment a place they were borrowing. I followed the steps I was told to follow. It took time, and it cost money I didn’t have much of.

They did not move back in. My parents stopped asking me to pay their bills. Veronica stopped calling. The apartment sat empty for a while, and I paid the utilities myself. I could’ve rented it out. I could’ve sold it. I didn’t decide right away.

I still have the screenshots. I don’t look at them much. I still have Matthew’s glove too, though I haven’t tried to clean the mud out again. Some days I go into his room and sit on the edge of his bed. I don’t have a better reason than that.

The apartment key with FAMILY written on its tag is in my kitchen drawer. It doesn’t open anything now.