For the first time all evening, Mom looked genuinely shaken. Not remorseful. Not enlightened. Just terrified because she finally understood they had no options left.

She grabbed Dad’s arm and guided him toward the door.

Neither of them looked back.

The front door clicked shut behind them, somehow louder than every insult that had filled the room before it.

For several seconds, neither Jordan nor I moved.

Outside, a car door slammed.

“That didn’t go the way you expected,” I finally said.

Jordan looked at me calmly, the same steady calm that had carried us through everything.

“No,” he admitted. “But it was the right decision. You did the right thing — like you always do.”

Something inside my chest loosened then.

Not relief. Not triumph.

Just clarity.

The kind that comes when you finally stop pretending something broken can still be fixed.

The check remained on the table between us.

Neither of us reached for it.