I don't remember the sound of the impact.
What I remember is the silence right after.
We were turning into the bank, the car rolling gently like it always did when Mom drove with one hand on the wheel and her mind somewhere else. I was in my car seat behind her, legs swinging, watching the sun flicker through the window. And then—one hard jolt. The car lurched forward. Mom's purse fell. My juice cup rolled under the seat.
I didn't cry. I didn't scream. I just… blinked.
Mom didn't even turn around to check on me. Not at first.
She exploded out of the car like a match hitting gasoline.
Her voice carried across the parking lot, sharp enough to cut open the sky.
"What the hell is wrong with you?! My baby is in this car! You could've killed her!" she screamed at the woman who had rear-ended us—a middle-aged lady who looked more shaken than either of us.
People stared. The woman apologized over and over, hands shaking, her face pale.
Mom didn't hear any of it.
Or she didn't care.
I sat in my car seat, still quiet, still unhurt, listening to my mother fight for a version of me I didn't quite recognize. The baby she was yelling about sounded fragile. Precious. The center of her universe.
But I knew better, even then.
Her anger wasn't really about me.
When she finally opened my door and looked at me, her eyes were wild—half panic, half calculation. She touched my face with shaking hands, stroking my cheek like she needed proof I was still alive.
"Oh thank God," she whispered dramatically, loud enough for the onlookers to hear.
I just stared back at her.
But the truth? I was fine.
I was more confused by her reaction than by the crash.
A few days later she was in a lawyer's office, legs crossed, speaking so sweetly you'd forget the way she'd screamed in that parking lot. She told her story like she was reading lines from a play she'd rehearsed her whole life—every detail polished, every emotion ready on cue.
When the lawyer nodded in sympathy, Mom flashed a smile I'd seen before.
The kind she wore when she was about to get something she wanted.
And eventually, she did.
Fifteen thousand dollars.
Fifteen thousand reasons for her to act like that day had been a tragedy instead of a bump on the bumper.
She told everyone she was going to use it responsibly.
She told herself she deserved it.
But deep inside, she already knew exactly where that money would go.
She had known from the moment she stepped out of the car and started screaming.
All she needed was patience.
And when the check finally came, that patience ran out—fast.
Whatever Mom was planning had nothing to do with her, and everything to do with the life she wanted more than anything else since I came into the picture.
I didn't know it then, sitting in my car seat with my feet kicking the air…
butBut that fifteen thousand dollars would change everything.
Not in a way any of us would have hoped.