It’s not that bizarre that Odilie would own this piece. It was a hit and Odilie was certainly in our demographic. But it’s the place, too, that’s bugging me. Something about the whole image is bugging me, like I’ve seen it all before, set on a different stage.

I exit out of it quickly and scroll down, all the way down to ten years ago, to her first block of posts, the colors so grainy and oversaturated I’m immediately transported to the early ages of the app. And then I’ve reached the end of her profile. So I’m forced to stop, sit back, my head on the window adjacent to the bed.

Now what? What was I doing? Why, suddenly, do I so desperately want to map out the life of a woman whose death ruined mine? But I know why; it’s because of what Quinn said, the delusion of connection with her, with her family. I want to know her, perhaps, so attending her Remembrance Ceremony won’t seem like such a farce.

Maybe I just want connection in general. At the end of it all, Quinn was the only person who really stuck by me. All those people I called friends, whom I worked with, whom I went to college with, disappeared at a time when I needed people on my side the most.

I take a pause and bring my pasta bowl down to the kitchen to clean. I spot a bottle of wine tucked in the back of the fridge and serve myself a huge glass. I’m about to go upstairs to finish whatever I’d started, when Mom comes bursting through the door, smelling too strongly of the jasmine essential oil she’s covered herself with today.

“Did you get what I asked for?” she says by way of greeting and I nod, eager to slink off to my room with the wine. “Great! Don’t you want to hear about my date?” I’m about to say no, but she launches into it, sitting herself down, waving her bangled arms as she talks. They met in yoga, of course, he owns a restaurant in town, he paid for her dinner, they’re astrologically well matched, he has a mustache, which she doesn’t love, but her psychic told her she’d meet someone important this month, so it must be he.

“I wanted to go back to his place, but I told him I had a sick daughter at home, that I could not leave her for the night.” She plays with her scarf, decorative, gauzy and colorful, not exactly made for warmth.

“Your sick daughter?” I snort.

Mom pouts. “Well, I didn’t want to explain your whole situation.”

“You should have just gone home with him.” I pick my glass of wine back up and prepare to go upstairs.