The third trailer had a way of talking.
Not in words—more in sounds.
Groans in the floorboards.
Whistles from the windows when the wind pushed too hard.
The sharp little pops in the walls at night, like the whole place was stretching its tired bones and warning us it couldn't hold much longer.
I think that's what Mom felt, too.
Like she was stretching herself thin trying to keep us all together.
In the beginning, she moved through the trailer with this forced kind of hope—cleaning everything she could reach, rearranging furniture that wasn't worth moving, lighting cheap candles to cover the smell of old smoke and damp wood. She wanted it to feel like a home. She wanted us to feel safe, even if she didn't.
Shannon helped at first.
Or at least pretended to.
He'd make promises about fixing things around the trailer, about being different this time. He'd put his arm around Mom, kiss her forehead, and talk about "our family" like he meant it.
But promises are easy when they don't cost anything.
And it didn't take long before the cracks in the walls started matching the cracks in their relationship.
Arguments slipped into the nights—low at first, like they were trying to hide the truth from themselves. Then louder. Sharper. Mom's voice tight with frustration, Shannon's full of excuses or anger or silence depending on the day.
I was too small to understand the words,
but I understood tension.
I felt it in the way her arms held me differently—closer, tighter, protective.
I sensed it in the way the air went still whenever Shannon walked through the door.
Mom tried to pretend.
She always did.
She smiled when she didn't want to.
She kept peace even when she was breaking.
She convinced herself things could get better—maybe because she needed them to.
Maybe because she thought we needed him.
But even a child can feel when something wrong plants itself in a home and refuses to leave.
The trailer grew colder, even when the weather didn't.
Money stretched thinner again.
Shannon's help became half-help, then no help at all.
And Mom… she started shrinking into herself.
Not disappearing—just dimming, like someone slowly turning the brightness down on a light that used to burn so fiercely.
Still, she stayed.
She stayed because she always tried one more time.
She stayed because leaving meant starting over again with nothing.
She stayed because hope can be a dangerous kind of glue—too weak to fix anything, too strong to easily break.
Some nights, when the yelling finally stopped and the house fell silent, Mom would hold me against her chest and breathe into my hair like I was the only thing keeping her grounded. And Mom would whisper:
"It's okay… it's okay… it's okay."
But her voice trembled.
And children always hear the truth in the tremble.
Looking back, I realize this chapter of our lives wasn't about the worst moments—not yet.
It was about the slow unraveling.
The tiny pieces falling one by one.
The foundation shifting under us long before the real collapse.
The trailer was just wood and metal.
But the things happening inside it…
those would shape everything that came after.