“Maybe,” I said. “If we can promise never to use each other as messengers.”
“Deal,” he said.
We exchanged numbers.
He walked back toward the cluster of black‑clad relatives. My parents watched him return, eyes flicking from him to me and back like they couldn’t quite compute the fact that we were building something without them at the center.
Inside the car, I rested my forehead against the steering wheel for a second before turning the key.
Grief pressed against my ribs.
So did a strange, small hope.
In the months after the funeral, life did what it always does when you think you’re standing in a movie montage.
It kept going.
OpenVest launched a new feature we called Doorways—a mentorship hub that paired “porch kids” who’d made it a few steps inside with those still standing outside wondering where to go.
The logo was simple: a small open rectangle with a light bar across the threshold.
“The design team says it’s too on the nose,” Ava joked in the kickoff meeting.
“Good,” I said.
“Sometimes subtlety is overrated.”
We built in safety checks and training modules and a whole legal framework to keep everyone as protected as possible. We partnered with local orgs in Austin, in Cedar Rapids, in cities I’d only ever seen on weather maps.
The first night Doorways went live, I sat on my balcony with my laptop and watched the numbers tick.
Ten mentor applications.
Fifty.
Two hundred.
On the other side, request after request from kids who were tired of hearing “it could be worse” and ready to hear “I’ve been there.”
One message came in from a girl in Des Moines:
I’m sitting on the curb outside my house with a trash bag. Mom said I can come back when I’m “less dramatic.” I don’t know where to go.
Please tell me this gets better.
Another from a boy in Phoenix:
My dad told me if I leave, I can’t come back. He says I’ll regret it. Did you?
Do you?
My fingers hovered over the keyboard.
What would you tell them if their text landed on your screen at 2 a.m.?
I took a breath and wrote back.
Not with platitudes.
With options.
With hotline numbers and shelter addresses and scripts for talking to school counselors and a reminder that regret and relief can live in the same heart and that doesn’t make you wrong.
Sometimes the most powerful thing you can say to a stranger is, “You’re not crazy. This is actually happening. And you are allowed to want out.”
Every time I thought the story had settled, ripples reached further.
One afternoon, mid‑meeting, Ava slid a note across the conference table.
Naomi on line two.
I excused myself and picked up the call in my office.
“Tell me something good,” I said.
She laughed, breathless.
“You sitting down?”
“I am now.”
“She stopped,” Naomi said.
“My sister. She doesn’t use the word curse anymore. She caught herself the other day and apologized to the baby—like actually got down on his level and said, ‘I’m sorry I called you that.
You’re not bad luck. I’m just stressed.’”
My heart flipped.
“And?”
“And she started therapy,” Naomi added. “She sent me a screenshot of the intake forms like it was a medal.”
I leaned back in my chair, staring at the ceiling tiles.
Some cycles don’t shatter.
They crack.
And then they keep cracking until light gets in.
“That kid’s going to grow up hearing a different story about himself,” I said.
“That’s the plan,” Naomi replied.
When we hung up, I sat for a long minute looking at my reflection in the dark computer screen.
“Have you ever realized you’re somebody’s evidence that a different ending is possible?” I heard myself ask in my head.
The thought scared me and steadied me at the same time.
The first Thanksgiving after Lenora’s death, I didn’t go back to Iowa.
I stayed in Austin, cooked a chicken instead of a turkey because it felt less performative, and invited people who had no place to be.
Ava came with a store‑bought pie.
Naomi flew in with her son, who toddled around my living room clutching a plastic truck. A couple of our Doorways mentors dropped by between shifts.
We went around the table naming things we were grateful for, half joking, half sincere.
“I’m grateful for whoever invented noise‑canceling headphones,” one of the mentors said.
“I’m grateful my lease says ‘no co‑signer required,’” another added.
“I’m grateful my sister didn’t hang up on me,” Naomi said, winking.
When it was my turn, I looked at the faces around the table.
“I’m grateful,” I said slowly, “that the people who were supposed to love me taught me exactly how not to, so when the right people showed up, I recognized them.”
A hush fell for a second.
Then someone clinked their fork against their glass.
“Hear, hear,” they said.
We ate. We laughed.
We argued about which streaming service had the best holiday movies.
At one point, Naomi’s son brought me a crumpled piece of paper.
“For you,” he said.
I unfolded it.
It was a drawing.
A house. A stick‑figure kid. A huge, lopsided sun.
“Is that you?” I asked.
He nodded proudly.
“Who’s that?” I pointed at the taller figure beside him.
“Auntie,” he said.
My throat closed.
Sometimes the universe doesn’t send you signs.
It hands you a crayon drawing and dares you not to cry.
People online love neat arcs.
The abandoned kid grows up, gets rich, confronts her parents, wins in court, finds chosen family, builds a platform, closes the door.
Roll credits.
Real life is messier.
Sometimes I still wake up at 3 a.m.
convinced I need to answer a text from a number I’ve blocked.
Sometimes I still hear my father’s voice in my head telling me I’ll regret this.
Sometimes I see a woman in a grocery store who looks like my mother from the side and my stomach drops before my brain catches up.
Healing didn’t make those reflexes disappear.
It just gave me more tools than a blanket and a stuffed rabbit.
On the days the old narratives get loud, I go back to the basics.
I walk through my house and touch the doorframes.
I water the basil plant Lenora insisted I keep alive.
I scroll through Doorways and read message threads between a kid in Nebraska and a mentor in New York trading tips about FAFSA forms and how to find a therapist who gets it.
I look at the drawing above my desk—the little girl walking toward the open door.
And I remind myself: I am not at the mercy of who shows up.
I am the one holding the handle.
If you’re still here with me, somewhere between the porch and the boardroom and the chapel and my cluttered Austin kitchen, I want to ask you something.
Which moment hit you hardest?
Was it the nine‑year‑old with the blanket and the backpack, waiting on a doorstep that would never open again?
Was it the stack of envelopes stamped RETURN TO SENDER, proof that sometimes the world hands your words back unopened?
Was it the judge saying, “She owes you nothing,” and the way those four words can rewrite a lifetime of guilt?
Was it the quiet click of a front door closing on the people who once closed it on me?
Or was it the drawing taped above my desk—the kid walking toward an open door, alone, but not abandoned?
If you feel like sharing, I’d genuinely like to know.
And if you’ve ever had to put up a boundary with family—soft or hard, whispered or shouted—what was the first one that actually stuck?
Was it not answering a call? Not going home for a holiday? Saying no to a loan you knew would never be paid back?
Or simply deciding that you didn’t have to explain yourself anymore?
You don’t have to write paragraphs if you don’t want to.
Maybe you just drop a number—1 for the porch, 2 for the letters, 3 for the courtroom, 4 for the door, 5 for the drawing—and I’ll know what you saw in it.
Or you tell me where you’re reading from, and I’ll picture another porch in another city, another kid somewhere finding their way inside.
Wherever you are, whatever version of family you’re untangling yourself from or rebuilding or learning to trust again, I hope you hear this and hold onto it.
You are not an obligation.
You are not a line item on someone else’s ledger.
You are a whole story.
And you get to decide who earns the right to read it.
