I could not breathe. Her grip was a shackle of guilt.
For a second, I saw the whole future unspool, a straight line from this room to a hundred empty apartments, a thousand bottles, my own face reflected in cracked glass, always running, never free.
The room was close, fetid. I felt the heat of her collapse. I tried to peel my arm away. She would not let loose. “I mean it,” she kept saying, “I mean it, I mean it—” each repetition smaller, a heartbeat losing pressure.
I don’t know how long I stood there, tethered to her grief, staring down at the top of her head, the scalp visible through thinning hair.
I wondered if she realized how small she’d become, how easily one could break her if they wanted. How easily she’d let herself be broken.
My skin crawled. I wanted to vanish between the floorboards.
Finally, I twisted my wrist hard and she let go with a yelp, fingers curling back to her own chest, sobbing into her knuckles.
I stood, watching her unravel across our borrowed beige carpet, and thought for the first time that maybe she was right: maybe she’d never be anything but poison, and maybe I was next in line to inherit the taste.
Maybe daughter’s were onlymeant to carry their mother’s grief.
When I finally made it to my room, I pressed my back to the door and slid down to the carpet, knees hugged to my chest, forehead against the cool hollow of my arms.
I tried to slow my heart, to dislodge the cold lump stuck behind my ribs, but it wouldn’t move.
I wanted to scream, to shake the walls until the house collapsed and buried all the ghosts for good.
Instead, I sat there, breathing shallow and fast, until my stomach cramped and my tongue tasted of copper.
Eventually, there were no more sounds from the living room. I pictured her there, fetal, curled around the empty, shatterproof bottle, eyelids flickering with dreams of before.
The shame of it—my shame—was a gluey, sluggish thing. I let it harden around me, a second skin I’d never be able to peel off.
THE PAST
AMELIA’S BREAKING POINT
I finally decided I would visit Lillian.
Since the day of her departure, the emptiness within me had grown wider, a void I couldn’t ignore.
Today, I received a phone call from Lillian. She said she had something to tell me but didn’t want to say it over the phone.
When she left, I hadn’t bothered to reach out. I figured she would contact me when she really needed to.
And now, she had.
So, I would have to push down whatever resentment still lingered inside me to visit my sister and hear her out.
I wondered if my mother would want to see Lillian. I looked around the house for her, but she had already left.
A note on the kitchen table stated that she had gone to work. Thank goodness she still had her job.
Barely.
I drove a few miles to the apartment complex where Lillian was staying, trying to shake off the nagging feeling of dread that settled in my stomach. She had told me her roommate would be gone for the day, so it would be just the two of us.
As I parked in an open spot and made my way to her door, I knocked and waited, my heart pounding in my chest. The tension hung in the air as I tapped my foot anxiously against the pavement.
When the door finally creaked open, Lillian stood before me,looking worn and despondent. The deep heaviness that seemed to sit upon her shoulders was unmistakable.
“Come in,” she said softly, her voice lacking its usual spark.
