For four through six go here. One through three is here.

Seven: One night I fall asleep to them screaming, in their bedroom, directly across the ugly, brown-carpeted hallway. I hear doors slam and the awful, gasping sobs of my mother before louder sounds of suitcases being dragged through our split level.

The next morning is Sunday. I peek out my bedroom hesitantly, half anxious to jump-start our Sunday morning ritual of cartoons and half afraid of seeing my family unit broken at the bottom of the staircase. I creep down the hallway, past my four-year old brother’s bedroom and peek in to see if he is asleep. He is. I move further down the hallway to the top of the stairs.

My father is sitting in the corner of our sectional in the family room, the family room he had lovingly painted pink, for me, when I had asked two years prior. He has his arms propped on his knees, a hand supporting one side of his head as he stares off, blankly, into space. The second step descending the stairs creaks and he looks up at me, trying to mask his weariness. There are no smells of breakfast cooking from the adjourning galley kitchen, no pretty mama in her silky pajamas and mussed-up hair drinking coffee in front of the fireplace. My dad does not have the morning paper spread out next to him, there is no cartoon section left aside for me to pour though. There is no faint, familiar hum from the television being on ESPN, on mute. Instead the house is eerily quiet. My father has dark circles shadowing his eyes, hinting at the emotional exhaustion he is suffering from. The dog is not curled up on the floor at my father’s feet and the house does not have the same warm and welcome feeling I always remember it having. Nothing is right and from this point forward, I know that nothing will be.

My dad motions for me to cuddle up with him on the couch. Putting his arm around me, in the pink, cold family room at 7 AM Sunday morning, he says with deep regret, “Whitney, baby. Mommy and I are divorcing.”

Your response: