shannon diaz has the strength of an army the way she survived five years as a single mom with the diazes looking over her shoulders. she was 19, just had a kid, her boyfriendhusband, who she married in a shot-gun wedding just a few months ago, was on the other side of the planet getting shot at in a desert, and then her kid's diagnosed with cp and she has to figure out treatment plans all on her own, and her best friendhusband, who's home for the first time in ages, makes choices without talking to her, no one is fucking talking to her, and her in-laws keep underhandedly telling her she's doing a bad job, that she should just give her kid to them, so even relying on that bit of extra childcare feels like giving up, admitting that she's a bad mother, a bad wife, and then suddenly her mom's dying 800 miles away, and then her husband's dying in some distant desert, and she doesn't know what to do, what can she even do, she's alone with her kid and her in-laws who act like it's her fault their son got shot and there's no one to talk to about any of this, and when her partnerhusband is finally home, this place doesn't feel like home anymore to her, never really has felt like home in the first place, but when she asks him to leave with her, just their little family and the road, move to LA so she can be with her dying mother, he says no, asks for time when she's given him five long years of her life, clings to this graveyard of a house that he hasn't properly lived in for years and yet somehow never left, and they can't talk about it because they don't ever talk anymore, they only fight, and this house, this town, these people, it's all killing her inside, and she knows if she stays now, she won't just lose her mother 800 miles west, she'll lose what little is left of herself as well, and her kid's in good hands now, she was a bad mother anyway, a bad wife, everyone said so, no one will mind if she leaves, no one will care, maybe they'll be happy actually, maybe this is one last good, strong thing she can do for them, selfish and selfless in equal measure, and so she leaves in the middle of the night because she knows what she's doing is unforgiveable, knows what it's like to be left, knows the hell she's leaving them in