I looked through the glass. Five feet away, my mother and sister sat on the plush leather sofas, a fire roaring, glasses of red wine in hand, laughing at something on the television.
Atticus was right there. Visible. Dying. And they were ignoring him.
A cold, terrifying clarity washed over me. I didn’t yell. I scooped Atticus up — he felt like a block of ice — and kicked open the back door.
My mother jumped, then frowned. “Oh, don’t bring him in here dripping wet. I just had the carpets cleaned. He wanted to go out, so we let him out.”
“He’s been out there for an hour, Mark,” my sister added, scrolling her phone. “He’s a dog. They have fur. He’s fine.”
“He can’t walk,” I said, my voice shaking. “His hips seized up. He was freezing to death five feet from you.”
“Oh, stop being dramatic,” my mother scoffed, sipping her wine. “You treat that cripple like a human. It’s embarrassing. Maybe if Sarah had trained him better, he wouldn’t be such a nuisance.”
Sarah came running up from the basement at the sound of her name. When she saw Atticus in my arms, blue-lipped and shaking, she let out a sob that broke me. She dropped to her knees and wrapped her body around him, crying, “I’m sorry, buddy, I’m so sorry.”
I looked at my mother. Then at Sarah. The veil lifted. One woman sat on a throne of judgment while a living creature suffered at her feet. The other was on her knees, ruining her clothes to warm an old dog.
“We’re leaving,” I said.
My mother laughed. “Don’t be silly. There’s a blizzard. Where are you going to go?”
“Anywhere that isn’t here.”
“If you walk out that door,” her voice turned steel-cold, “don’t expect to come back. You are choosing a dog and that girl over your own blood? Over your inheritance?”
I looked at Atticus, licking the tears off Sarah’s face.
“Mom,” I said, feeling lighter than I had in years, “you think you’re rich because you have this house and that money. But you’re poor. You have no kindness in you. And without kindness, you have nothing.”
We packed two duffel bags in ten minutes. My sister yelled from the stairs that we’d come crawling back when the money ran out. I didn’t answer. I carried Atticus to the truck. Sarah climbed in beside him, wrapping him in our heated blanket.
We found a roadside motel five miles down the road, stale cigarettes and stained carpet.
It was the most beautiful place I had ever seen.
