My father-in-law called me in Paris during my first approved break in six years and fired me before I finished my coffee. He called me lazy, told me to get on the next flight home, and reminded me, the way he always had, that everything I had only existed because he allowed it. I laughed, hung up, and stayed in Paris another eight days. When I came back to Savannah, he still thought he had humiliated me. He had no idea he had just handed my wife and me exactly what we’d been waiting for.
Six years of my life smelled like burnt office coffee, toner dust, and the inside of my own clenched jaw. That was the first thing I thought when my father-in-law called me from Savannah while I was standing on a hotel balcony in Paris, looking at a city that had absolutely no interest in small…
