{"id":7938,"date":"2026-11-02T17:41:04","date_gmt":"2026-11-02T17:41:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nextstoryus.com\/?p=7938"},"modified":"2026-11-02T17:41:04","modified_gmt":"2026-11-02T17:41:04","slug":"part-3-my-father-forced-me-out-of-the-house-during-a-freezing-october-storm-because-my-sister-accused-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nextstoryus.com\/?p=7938","title":{"rendered":"PART 3-My father forced me out of the house during a freezing October storm because my sister accused me &#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Jenny was my mom. \u201cI know,\u201d Dad said. His voice was ragged. \u201cDo you? Because I don\u2019t think you do. I think you\u2019ve been sitting in that house for three years with the curtains closed, pretending you\u2019re fine, while one of your daughters turned into a drug addict and the other one turned into a ghost.\u201d \u201cDiane\u2026\u201d \u201cI begged you. At the anniversary. I begged you to get help. Grief counseling. Something. And you told me to get off your property.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/scontent-iad3-2.xx.fbcdn.net\/v\/t39.30808-6\/877709818_122127828267416630_5563900299362070280_n.jpg?stp=dst-jpg_tt6&amp;cstp=mx1122x1402&amp;ctp=s640x640&amp;_nc_cat=111&amp;ccb=1-7&amp;_nc_sid=127cfc&amp;_nc_ohc=O4IcoNRfDRwQ7kNvwGWnt5m&amp;_nc_oc=AdpRCCJCIs-hI3awGOwD_uaDItRycPImNkHMyuifae0R5ekRRsKzSptn4EKWrRL-L8I&amp;_nc_zt=23&amp;_nc_ht=scontent-iad3-2.xx&amp;_nc_gid=EEZSDKOgdmMrD6v4KazoYg&amp;_nc_ss=792a8&amp;oh=00_AQQH7c_iLip64ncJMZbTzMW-xQua-zu5twgra61MFYl66A&amp;oe=6AEE950F\" alt=\"No photo description available.\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Silence. \u201cI know,\u201d Dad said again. Quieter. \u201cYou don\u2019t get to say I know anymore, Tom. You get to fix it. Or you get to lose them both.\u201d There was a long silence. Then I heard a sound I had never heard in my whole life. I didn\u2019t recognize it at first. It was a deep, choking, gasping sound, like somebody trying to breathe underwater. It was my father crying. He hadn\u2019t cried at Mom\u2019s funeral. He hadn\u2019t cried in the hospital when she died. He stood by the bed holding her hand, and when the machine went flat, he just nodded and walked out to the parking lot and sat in his truck.<\/p>\n<p>Now he was crying in a hospital hallway at two in the morning, so loud the night nurse came out to see what was wrong. I lay in my bed and listened. I didn\u2019t call out to him. I didn\u2019t know if I wanted to. But I didn\u2019t put my hands over my ears, either. Chapter Nine: What Dad Said<\/p>\n<p>He came in on the ninth day. Angela Reyes was there. She sat in the corner of the room with her clipboard, because those were the rules for now.<\/p>\n<p>He sat down in Roz\u2019s chair. He held his hands together between his knees. They were shaking.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHey, kiddo,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHi.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He looked at my bandaged hands. They\u2019d taken some of the wrapping off by then. My fingers were swollen and purple at the tips. Dr. Feldman said I\u2019d probably keep all of them, but the two on my left hand might always be sensitive to cold.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDo they hurt?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYeah.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He nodded. He looked at the floor.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI knew,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>I looked at him.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNot all of it,\u201d he said. \u201cBut I knew something. When the pharmacy called on Sunday. I knew you\u2019d never taken anything. I knew Karen had been different since her knee. I\u2019d find her asleep in the afternoon. I\u2019d hear her up at three in the morning. I\u2019d count the money in my wallet and it would be wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He rubbed his face with both hands.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd I didn\u2019t want to know,\u201d he said. \u201cBecause if I knew, I\u2019d have to do something. And I didn\u2019t know how to do anything. I couldn\u2019t fix your mom. I couldn\u2019t fix anything. I couldn\u2019t even get out of my chair most nights.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo you picked me,\u201d I said. \u201cBecause I was easier.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He closed his eyes.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen Karen came down with that bottle,\u201d he said, \u201csome part of me knew it wasn\u2019t yours. Some part of me knew. But it was easier to be angry at you than to be scared for her. You were strong. You\u2019d survive me being angry. I thought\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He stopped.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI thought you\u2019d survive anything,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou said I was sick,\u201d I said. My voice was shaking. \u201cYou said you didn\u2019t need a sick daughter. You said you already watched one person waste away.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI know.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou turned off the porch light.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He made a sound like I\u2019d punched him in the stomach.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI know,\u201d he whispered.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI stood there,\u201d I said. \u201cOn the porch. I waited. I waited for you to open the door. And you turned off the light.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He couldn\u2019t answer. He sat there with tears running down his face and dripping off his chin onto his knees, and he didn\u2019t wipe them.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI sat in that chair for three hours,\u201d he said finally. \u201cI told myself you were at the Hendersons\u2019. I told myself you were fine. I told myself I was teaching you a lesson.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He looked up at me.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThen the phone rang,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd the officer said you weren\u2019t breathing. And I couldn\u2019t stand up. My legs just went. I held onto the kitchen wall and I thought, I did this. I put my baby girl in a ditch. Jenny\u2019s baby. I locked the door and I put her in a ditch.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He reached out his hand toward mine. Then he stopped, halfway, and pulled it back. Like he didn\u2019t think he was allowed.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m not asking you to forgive me,\u201d he said. \u201cI don\u2019t deserve it. I\u2019m just telling you I\u2019m sorry. I\u2019m going to be sorry for the rest of my life.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I looked at my father. At his gray hair and his red eyes and his rough, cracked hands.<\/p>\n<p>I wanted to forgive him. Part of me did. The part that was still seven years old, the part that used to ride on his shoulders at the county fair.<\/p>\n<p>But the other part of me was still lying in that ditch. Still hearing the click of the deadbolt. Still watching the porch light go off.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI can\u2019t,\u201d I said. \u201cNot yet.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He nodded slowly. Like he\u2019d expected it.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOkay,\u201d he said. \u201cOkay.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He stood up. At the door, he turned around.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m going to fix it,\u201d he said. \u201cNot with words. I\u2019m going to do the work. Whatever it takes. However long.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Then he left.<\/p>\n<p>Angela Reyes put down her clipboard and came over and sat on the edge of my bed and just held my arm while I cried.<\/p>\n<p>Chapter Ten: The Hearing<\/p>\n<p>I got out of the hospital on the sixteenth day. Aunt Diane drove me to Columbus in her Honda with the heat turned all the way up, even though it wasn\u2019t that cold.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou don\u2019t have to do that,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYes, I do,\u201d she said. \u201cFor a while, I do.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The dependency hearing was in early December, at the county courthouse in our town. It was a small courtroom with wood paneling and a flag in the corner and a heater that clanked.<\/p>\n<p>There were more people there than I expected. Mrs. Bell, the caseworker, in a gray cardigan. My guardian ad litem, a lawyer named Mr. Hutchins, who had visited me twice in Columbus and asked me a hundred questions. Aunt Diane. Officer Daniels, in his uniform. Roz, in a purple church dress and a hat, who had asked if she could come and sit in the back.<\/p>\n<p>And Dad. In a suit I\u2019d never seen before. It didn\u2019t fit right. It looked like he\u2019d bought it the day before.<\/p>\n<p>Karen wasn\u2019t there. She was in her fifth week at the residential treatment program in Dayton. But she\u2019d sent a letter.<\/p>\n<p>The judge was a woman named Judge Harlan. She was older, with short white hair and glasses on a chain like Roz\u2019s. She had a voice like a kind grandmother who would absolutely send you to your room.<\/p>\n<p>The lawyers talked for a long time. About the night of the storm. About the prescription fraud. About Dad\u2019s criminal case, which had been resolved the week before: he\u2019d pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of child endangerment. Ninety days suspended, two years of probation, a parenting program, and grief counseling twice a week.<\/p>\n<p>Mr. Hutchins read part of Karen\u2019s letter out loud. She\u2019d written that she took full responsibility for using my identity, that I had never touched the pills, and that she was ninety-six hours from finishing detox and thirty-one days clean.<\/p>\n<p>Then Judge Harlan read a report from Dad\u2019s grief counselor. A man named Dr. Okonkwo. The report said Dad had attended every session. It said he was \u201cengaged and remorseful\u201d and had begun \u201cprocessing three years of unresolved grief.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I watched Dad while she read it. He sat very straight at the table with his hands folded. He didn\u2019t look at me. He looked at the floor.<\/p>\n<p>Then Judge Harlan looked at me over her glasses.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYoung lady,\u201d she said. \u201cMr. Hutchins tells me you\u2019d like to speak today. Is that right?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>My heart was pounding. My hands were sweating. My left fingers ached, the way they always did now when I was nervous.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYes, ma\u2019am.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou can stay right there in your seat. You don\u2019t have to come up. Take your time.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I stood up anyway. I don\u2019t know why. I just felt like I should be standing.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBefore you start,\u201d the judge said gently, \u201cwould you please state your name for the record?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I opened my mouth.<\/p>\n<p>And for a second, nothing came out. Just like on the side of the road, when the car hissed past and I tried to yell and no sound came.<\/p>\n<p>I thought about how I\u2019d felt that whole night. Like I didn\u2019t matter. Like I was a dark shape on the side of the road that cars drove past. Like my name was just something written on a bottle that somebody else picked up with their own ID.<\/p>\n<p>Then I looked at the back of the courtroom. At Roz in her purple hat. She gave me a tiny nod.<\/p>\n<p>Once you see somebody, you can\u2019t unsee them.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMy name is Hannah,\u201d I said. My voice shook, and then it didn\u2019t. \u201cHannah Grace Walls.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThank you, Hannah,\u201d Judge Harlan said. \u201cGo ahead.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019d written something on an index card. I took it out of my pocket. Then I put it back. I didn\u2019t need it.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI almost died,\u201d I said. \u201cOn County Road 9. In October. I was dead for fourteen minutes. A nurse I\u2019d never met knelt in a ditch in the rain and pushed on my chest for fourteen minutes until the ambulance came. She broke my ribs. She saved my life.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I looked at Roz. She pressed a tissue to her mouth.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m not here to say my dad is a monster,\u201d I said. \u201cHe\u2019s not. He\u2019s my dad. He made the worst mistake a parent can make. He believed the easy story instead of the true one. And he locked the door.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I looked at Dad. He was looking at me now. His eyes were wet.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut I don\u2019t think he\u2019s a bad person,\u201d I said. \u201cI think he\u2019s been sad for so long that he forgot how to see us. Me and Karen. We were right there. And he couldn\u2019t see either of us.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo here\u2019s what I want,\u201d I said. \u201cI want to stay with Aunt Diane. For now. Through the school year. I like my new school. I\u2019m safe there. I can sleep.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Judge Harlan nodded slowly.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut I want to see my dad,\u201d I said. \u201cEvery other weekend. With somebody there at first, if you think that\u2019s best. And I want him to keep going to counseling. And I want him to go to the family program at Karen\u2019s treatment center. Because we all need to learn how to be a family again, and none of us know how.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>My voice cracked.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd I want him to come to my algebra tutoring,\u201d I said. \u201cOn Saturdays. Because I missed three weeks of school and I\u2019m failing, and he used to be good at math.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Somebody in the courtroom laughed softly. Maybe Officer Daniels.<\/p>\n<p>Dad put his hand over his mouth.<\/p>\n<p>Judge Harlan looked at me for a long time. Then she looked at Dad.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMr. Walls,\u201d she said. \u201cDid you hear your daughter?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYes, Your Honor,\u201d Dad said. His voice was barely there.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEvery word?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEvery word.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGood,\u201d she said. \u201cBecause I\u2019m going to order every one of them.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>She took off her glasses.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHannah,\u201d she said, \u201cI\u2019ve been doing this for twenty-two years. I\u2019ve heard a lot of children speak in this courtroom. I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve ever heard one speak more clearly.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>She put her glasses back on and picked up her pen.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTemporary custody to the maternal aunt, Diane Mercer,\u201d she said. \u201cSupervised visitation with the father, to transition to unsupervised at the caseworker\u2019s discretion. Continued counseling. Family therapy. Review hearing in six months.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>She looked at Dad one more time.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd Mr. Walls,\u201d she said. \u201cSaturday tutoring. Don\u2019t be late.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Chapter Eleven: Rebuilding<\/p>\n<p>Dad was never late. Not once.<\/p>\n<p>Every other Saturday, he drove ninety minutes to Columbus and sat next to me at the kitchen table at Aunt Diane\u2019s house while a college student named Marcus tried to teach me algebra. Mrs. Bell sat in the living room the first few times, pretending to read a magazine.<\/p>\n<p>Dad didn\u2019t talk much at first. He just sat there. When I got stuck, he\u2019d lean over and look at the problem and say, \u201cTry isolating the x first.\u201d He was usually right.<\/p>\n<p>After the fourth Saturday, Mrs. Bell stopped coming.<\/p>\n<p>In January, we started family therapy at Karen\u2019s treatment center in Dayton. Once a week, on Wednesday nights. Me, Dad, Karen, and a counselor named Ms. Abernathy in a small room with a box of tissues on every surface.<\/p>\n<p>The first session was terrible. Karen cried the whole time. Dad didn\u2019t say a single word. I sat with my arms crossed and stared at a poster on the wall about the stages of change.<\/p>\n<p>The second session was a little less terrible.<\/p>\n<p>By the sixth session, Karen and I were laughing about the time Mom tried to make sushi and set off every smoke alarm in the house. Dad laughed too. It was the first time I\u2019d heard him laugh in three years. It came out rusty and surprised, like a door that hadn\u2019t been opened.<\/p>\n<p>Karen finished her ninety days in February. She moved into a sober living house in Dayton with five other women. She got a job at a coffee shop. She started going to meetings every day.<\/p>\n<p>She called me on Sunday nights. Sometimes we talked for an hour. Sometimes for five minutes.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSixty-one days,\u201d she\u2019d tell me. Then ninety. Then a hundred and twenty.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m proud of you,\u201d I\u2019d say.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDon\u2019t be proud of me yet,\u201d she\u2019d say. \u201cBe proud of me in a year.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>She paid back the insurance company. Her lawyer worked it out as part of the drug court agreement: $1,140 for the two fraudulent prescriptions, at fifty dollars a month from her coffee shop paychecks. The online clinic in Florida was shut down in March. The state attorney general\u2019s office sent Officer Daniels a letter thanking him for his report.<\/p>\n<p>Dad sold the house on Linden Street in April.<\/p>\n<p>He told me on a Saturday, at Aunt Diane\u2019s kitchen table, after Marcus left.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI can\u2019t live there anymore,\u201d he said. \u201cEvery time I walk past that front door, I hear it. The lock.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I didn\u2019t say anything. I heard it too.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI found a place,\u201d he said. \u201cA little two-bedroom ranch. Closer to Columbus. Forty minutes from here instead of ninety.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTwo bedrooms,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOne for me,\u201d he said. \u201cOne for you. Whenever you want it. Whenever you\u2019re ready. Even if that\u2019s never.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Roz came to my sixteenth birthday party in May. She brought a sweet potato pie and a card with a fifty-dollar bill in it and a note that said: For your first winter coat that\u2019s entirely yours. Pick a warm one.<\/p>\n<p>I hugged her for a long time. She smelled like cocoa butter and church.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHow are your fingers?\u201d she asked.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey hurt when it\u2019s cold,\u201d I said. \u201cBut I have all ten.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGood,\u201d she said. \u201cYou keep all ten. You hear me? You keep every single one of them.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>At the six-month review hearing in June, Judge Harlan read the reports from Mrs. Bell and Ms. Abernathy and Dr. Okonkwo. She read my report card, which had a B-plus in algebra.<\/p>\n<p>She looked up at Dad over her glasses.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTutoring seems to be going well,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYes, ma\u2019am,\u201d Dad said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHannah,\u201d she said. \u201cWhere do you want to live next school year?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I looked at Aunt Diane. She squeezed my hand.<\/p>\n<p>I looked at Dad. He was holding his breath. I could see it.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI want to try living with my dad,\u201d I said. \u201cPart time. Weekends, for the summer. And then we\u2019ll see.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Dad let out his breath. He didn\u2019t cry this time. He just nodded, and nodded, and kept nodding.<\/p>\n<p>Chapter Twelve: The Key<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s October again now. A year since the storm.<\/p>\n<p>I live with Dad most of the time. I have the second bedroom in the little ranch house. I stuck glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling. Karen came down from Dayton on a Saturday and helped me put them up, standing on my desk chair the way she did when I was seven.<\/p>\n<p>She has three hundred and thirty-four days clean. She\u2019s thinking about nursing school. Roz is helping her fill out the applications.<\/p>\n<p>I spend every other weekend with Aunt Diane, who says her house is too quiet without me and keeps buying cereal I don\u2019t eat.<\/p>\n<p>Last Tuesday, a storm came through.<\/p>\n<p>It came in from the west, a big red and purple blob on the Weather Channel. The rain started around dinnertime. By seven, it was coming down so hard it bounced off the porch railing. The wind bent the little maple tree in our new front yard almost sideways.<\/p>\n<p>I was at the kitchen table doing homework. Geometry now. Proofs.<\/p>\n<p>Dad was in the living room. He got up and went to the window and stood there for a long time, watching the rain.<\/p>\n<p>Then he came into the kitchen and sat down across from me.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHey, kiddo.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHey.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He didn\u2019t say anything else. He just sat there. He stayed there for the whole storm, two hours, doing nothing, reading the newspaper and then just looking at it, while I did my proofs.<\/p>\n<p>I knew why. I didn\u2019t say anything. I let him sit.<\/p>\n<p>Around nine-thirty, I needed to get something out of the car. My geometry book. I\u2019d left it in the back seat of Aunt Diane\u2019s Honda when she dropped me off.<\/p>\n<p>I got up and went to the front closet. I took out my coat. My winter coat, the one I bought with Roz\u2019s fifty dollars and some of my own babysitting money. It\u2019s dark green and puffy and goes down to my knees. It\u2019s the warmest coat I\u2019ve ever owned.<\/p>\n<p>I put it on and zipped it all the way up. I put my phone in one pocket. I put my house key in the other.<\/p>\n<p>Dad gave me that key in June, the first night I stayed over. He put it on a ring with a little plastic tag that says in his handwriting: Hannah. Always.<\/p>\n<p>I opened the front door. The porch light was on. It\u2019s always on now. Dad put it on a timer the week he moved in, so it comes on at sunset and doesn\u2019t go off until sunrise, no matter what.<\/p>\n<p>The rain was blowing in sideways. I ran down to the car, grabbed my book, and ran back up the walk.<\/p>\n<p>When I got to the porch, the door was closed.<\/p>\n<p>I stood there for a second, rain dripping off my hood. My heart did something strange in my chest. My left fingers ached. For one second, just one, I was fifteen again, standing under a dark porch in a wet sweatshirt, waiting.<\/p>\n<p>Then I heard a sound from the other side of the door.<\/p>\n<p>The deadbolt turned.<\/p>\n<p>Click.<\/p>\n<p>The door swung open. Dad was standing there in his socks, holding it wide. The light from the hallway poured out onto the wet porch boards.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGet in here,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s freezing.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I stepped inside. He closed the door behind me.<\/p>\n<p>And he left it unlocked.<\/p>\n<p>I said at the beginning that my name didn\u2019t matter as much as what happened to me that night.<\/p>\n<p>I was wrong about that.<\/p>\n<p>That night, I was a dark shape on the side of the road. A name on a bottle somebody else picked up. A sick daughter. A garbage bag in someone\u2019s headlights.<\/p>\n<p>And then a stranger saw a white sneaker in the rain and backed up fifty feet on a dark road and knelt down in the gravel.<\/p>\n<p>My name is Hannah Grace Walls. I was fifteen. I died on County Road 9 for fourteen minutes, and a nurse named Roz Okafor counted out loud in the rain until I came back.<\/p>\n<p>The sound I remember most from that night is a lock clicking shut.<\/p>\n<p>But it isn\u2019t the sound I hear when I come home now.<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>THE END.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jenny was my mom. \u201cI know,\u201d Dad said. His voice was ragged. \u201cDo you? Because I don\u2019t think you do. I think you\u2019ve been sitting in that house for three &hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3333,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,21,22,1,5,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7938","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-aita","category-daily-article","category-reddit-stories","category-story","category-story-daily","category-viral-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nextstoryus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7938","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nextstoryus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nextstoryus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nextstoryus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nextstoryus.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7938"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nextstoryus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7938\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7939,"href":"https:\/\/nextstoryus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7938\/revisions\/7939"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nextstoryus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3333"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nextstoryus.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7938"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nextstoryus.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7938"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nextstoryus.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7938"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}